These Scales aren't Balanced

I found it interesting to watch CNN's Anderson Cooper report on the news station's own shocking non-reporting of the mass shooting in Chicago which injured thirteen people on  September 19th, 2013. Just three days earlier the country was rocked by a mass shooting in the Washington DC Naval Yard , where thirteen people, including the shooter, were killed. On that day and those afterward, CNN dedicated almost every hour of news coverage to the Naval yard shooting story, repeatedly playing the same tape of streets full of ambulances, helicopters hovering above the scene, and updating every minute detail as it came in. Quite honestly, during the morning hours, thee was little to update, and some information was speculative, and filler material simply to keep the story on air until more could be learned. At the time I began to feel that it might be better to break from the story temporarily, and then come back at an appropriate time with more details. After all, this was not the only news of the day, and, much as I wanted to know what was happening, I also wanted accurate information, which seemed more likely to come with time. I was not opposed to coverage, but I certainly felt that the coverage was gratuitous.

On Friday, having read about the shooting in Chicago on the internet, I tuned in to CNN's Wolf Blitzer in hopes of learning more, but as I watched with my seventeen year old son, the promised story was almost dismissed in a few sentences. I cannot even say, "five minutes," because the story was not even given this much time. Sadly, my son commented with cynicsm that he did not expect to see much more because this was"just" Chicago.

Later in the day, I watched Anderson Cooper 360. It seemed as though "not mentioning the Chicago shooting enough" may have prompted some national dialogue because the subject of that show was how "we as a country should be just as concerned about mass shootings in Chicago as we are about shootings such as those in the Navy yard, in Aurora, or Newtown." However, CNN, having scolded not only the American Public, but themselves, for lack of reporting, could not even dedicate the entire one hour show to the story, and drifted into the "rediculist" and other news.

I am not sure that the Chicago story would have made more than a passing story on CNN had a three year old child not been shot in the face. yes, I did just say that. Had it been the usual black youth, shot by gang gunfire, this story would have had much less shock factor, but young Deonta, who lost most of his face during the shooting, became a symbol of everything wrong with Chicago violence. How could they shoot a baby?

The four people who have lost their lives in Chicago in the twenty four hours since the basketball mass shooting, and another ten who have been severely injured, have been lost completely in the National news, and only make statistics in local papers. They are dead, and injured, none-the-less.
I don't have a magical answer as to how the media should cover shootings, but I do know that when two mass shootings occur in one week, it is blatantly wrong to give one the "appeal" of a mini movie marathon, complete with dramatically themed news music every time the story comes back from commercial break, interviews with family members, and endless details about the murderer, yet slide the other mass shooting nicely into a one hour time slot.

I would like to comment also, that I am a fan of CNN news, and learn a great deal of information from this source, but something is wrong with this picture. Hey, I know I am not the only one to point it out!!