shakran

For some reason I had neglected to close the browser when I went off to make breakfast - - just restored from the back button


I don't think you're being insensitive - I just think that, not having seen how the media handled the coverage puts you at rather a disadvantage when trying to comment on that coverage.

I didn't get to see ALL of the memorial yesterday because I was busy trying to convince a recalcitrant live truck mast to come back down from it's 50' height where it was frozen in place, but what I saw of the actual memorial itself was respectful. I noticed that all the cameras were on the periphery of the event - no photogs were getting in anyone's faces, and the announcer (I was watching the CNN feed) only broke in to tell the viewers who was speaking - no commentary that I heard.

Now, the rest of it, I'm right there with you. We don't need to drag the viewer along through the newsgathering process. It's OUR job to work the information over and over again until we have enough to tell you, and only then should we break in and tell you. The reason we don't is because of this idiotic desire to be first with everything - there's this stupid fear throughout our profession that if someone else beats us by as much as 10 seconds to giving you new information, that you'll change channels and never come back to us. I don't believe that for a minute, but there it is. Like I said before, tell us where we're screwing up. Get vocal. Write letters. Call us. Tell us how we can improve - -- most of us already know it, but we can't convince the bosses. You can.

I don't need to take a break to see how distasteful most of it is.

On a local level, you always find out about the deaths of the local soldiers. Always. You might not find out about the dead soldier from the neighboring state, but if he's a hometown kid, it WILL be on the news as soon as it's found out.


The criminal profilers aren't doing the job. This isn't an isolated incident. Society is becoming increasingly violent and insane. We MUST find out why, and act to fix the problem. And when I say we, I mean we as a society. We can't leave this to the "experts." They're the ones who got us here in the first place.

That's not what I meant at all. I want to get to the root causes of these incidents - not to prevent the individual incidents themselves but to stop these kinds of insane thoughts from happening in people in the first place. I have long suspected that the human race is slowly going insane - Every generation sees greater violence and depravity than the previous one. Ever more inexplicable acts occur on a more and more regular basis. We must find out why. I've said this before - personally I have a feeling the cause is environmental. The average person today is walking around with more than 600% of the amount of lead that was in the average person 100 years ago. Lead is a neurotoxin. It MUST be effecting us somehow. And that's only one of the hundreds if not thousands of chemicals we've exposed ourselves to - many of which we don't even know the effects. There isn't a surface on the planet now that doesn't have traces of Scotchguard on it. What's that doing to us? To our minds? We must examine incidents like this and find their root causes if we want any hope of surviving as a species. Maybe I'm wrong - maybe it's not chemical - but SOMETHING is causing people to go nuts more and more often. It cannot be allowed to continue unchecked.