21 injured in Pennsylvania school stabbing

This is going to make Obama come out against the knife lobby.

 

Where do I live?

What city's murder rate has received national media attention, which tends to drive debate/discussion?

Chicago is a bigger, more prominent city than Detroit, St. Louis, or Baltimore. It's also doing better than any of those cities, which makes the disparity all the more jarring. Take a look at CNN's Chicagoland for an example.

Yesterday's stabbing drew wall-to-wall TV coverage, but didn't generate any discussion here. It's not like people were unaware of it. It just didn't motivate them to discuss it.

That's fine. There's no need to discuss every incident. And, whether it's hypocritical or not (and I did not say it was), I think we're lying if we don't admit that the absence of a gun is a big reason why there was no response.

 

Who in the world argued that? Of course that's a big reason. No gun. No deaths.

This was a wet dream of a story for CNN, but not to the rest of us who have grown quite tired of their antics.

 

It's as if guns really do kill people.

 

No gun. No deaths. No political points to score.

 

Can you locate the thread on the Santa Monica rampage shooting? People died. I'm interested to see what people here said at the time.

 

There was a period a year or two after Columbine where a couple of school shootings where multiple people died seemed way under the radar.

 

This.

We as former or current media professionals should be able to differentiate between the breathless teevee screaming and determine what is actually worthy of it or not.

Regardless of political agendas that exist in the world, we can all agree that a gun-toting madman slaughtering dozens of first graders is worthy of wall-to-wall coverage. A kid stabbing 21 people, all of whom survived with only minor injuries, is merely non-wall-to-wall-breathless-screaming worthy of coverage.

 

I thought we were concerned about the premature loss of human life, period. I guess the loss of life in Detroit, St. Louis or Baltimore doesn't move people because there are no political points to score.

 

I think we can agree that the media has a hard time focusing on multiple issues at once, or putting issues into a broader context. (Especially TV media.)

So, while the murder rate is higher in Detroit, St. Louis, and Baltimore, they're not all going to get equal coverage, or even coverage at all.

So, does Chicago get more coverage because it's a way for some to score political points, or is it because it's a bigger, more prominent city; the home of the sitting President, which is run by a high profile mayor, who is known nationally, and a police chief recruited from NYC (and Newark)?

Is it because Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, yet still has a problem with gun violence?

Is it because it's a bigger media market, and is an easier story for the media to cover?

Maybe it's a little of all of the above.

But, it's pretty silly, and pretty sad, to think all of the attention is some attempt to embarrass the President, and is (therefore) unfair, and unwarranted.

 

Um, that would fall under "drawing attention in order to score a political point."

 

Couldn't it just be a "point"?