The shooting at Virginia Tech(?) is given a lot of attention in Norwegian media. What frusterates me is the angle they give it. The journalists gives me their (subjective) perspective, and don't even try to be objective. In Norway, we hear only of the liberal* weaponlaws, and how bad it is to be allowed to go buying a gun in a shop in USA. Whenever they interwiew people in USA, they as what they think about the weapon-law, and as the people they interwiew generally find that question not that relevant, the journalists starts pestering them on why they don't think weapons should be banned. When comentators and correspondents reports from USA, they talk about the weird americans that don't ban their guns, and rather discuss how this Korean could have been helped. In short: "why don't the americans think like we do?" Now; my wiew on this issue is pretty close to the wiev of the Norwegian journalists, but that's not the point: When it comes to this shooting-incident; I'm not that interrested in what wiew a given journalist (that happens to have the same wiew as me) have on american weaponlaws. I'm more interrested in what wiev americans have on the issue :bang: So, for those that have bothered reading this far: How is the media-coverage in your country; what do they focus on? The wiew of the ones they interwiew, or on telling the audience what they think the people they interwiew should think? This is how prejudices are preserved :cry: Most people don't bother about foren poletics, and the few that are interrested are pestered with biased journalists more eager to show off whatever they think, not to present the wiew of the people in the countries they cover :woo: * = Actually norwegian weaponlaws are allmost as liberal, but that fact seems to have escaped the norwegian journalist...
Interesting topic, I'll give it a go: Depending on the journalist/news agency you can run the deck of how this incident is reported. You get the School side, the victims' side, the Gun Lobbists's side, the Anti-Gun side, the State Side, and on and on. The goal seems, right now, to be "Who Let This Happen". Gun laws aside, everyone is trying to pick the brain of this individual to see "WHY" he went bananas and "WHY" nobody was able to see that this guy was a bomb waiting to go off. Fact is, I don't care to know "Why" he did what he did. I do want to know how the current checks and balances that are in place failed to Red Flad this individual. His family thought he was strange. Those that knew him thought he was strange. The school felt that he was enough of a problem to have him evaluated. The people that evaluated him thought he was a danger to himself and others, yet they let him back out into the community. The Mental Health Officials did not submitt this guys mental status to the national FBI database so that when Cho went to buy guns, he passed all checks. The Mental Health people also did not notify the school and the school failed to follow up on their end. Lots of holes that need to be filled. There is a huge fight coming, I think, between the mental health community and those that think Cho's mental evaluation should have been disseminated. This is going to be fight about medical records, which currently are regulated very tightly, and Public Safety. The reporters will be looking to blame someone, anyone, they won't care who just as long as they "look" like they are doing something good. Personally, having had many dealings with reporters, I don't put much faith in what they say, print, or prattle on about.
The journalists in my country largely missed the whole thing; they were either too busy squabling amoung each other all wanting their own live current events show or they were covering a police investigation into a rape that turned out not to have happened. In the end they gave up and replayed news highlights from 2005. Heh. Apparently a cat was stuck up a large palm tree for more than three days in Napier that year, before a daring rescue by the fire department.
