Julia Carrie WongI don’t know if it’s good for us as a society that we’ve created the expectation that normal members of the public should be regularly exposed to traumatic imagery of violent crimes in the course of staying up to date on the news.
This comes on a day when news consumers are getting a constant stream of foreboding quotes about footage of the killing of Tyre Nichols, and a week in which news outlets ran footage of a man fighting for his life against a mass shooter, a week when The NYT autoplayed footage from the immediate aftermath of the shooting that killed Halyna Hutchins.
This is not to say that news outlets shouldn’t publish footage that’s of public interest. But I do wonder if we’re providing our audiences with enough information about the potential benefit of limiting the amount they are exposed to. Not everyone needs to bear witness to every horror. Being informed doesn’t and shouldn’t require exposure to first hand traumatic material.
Jesse@joolia Part of why my #twitterMigration was so easy is because I had consciously uncoupled myself from Twitter and breaking news alerts last year. It was just too much.
ChrisUValid point, Americans are desensitised to violence
Doug BostromSemi-related: obsessive focus on -why- the person fired N ammunition rounds into a crowd of innocents.
Dangerous distractions from matters actually under our control, such as making N rounds unavailable to crazy people.
Sensation isn't information.
Tony@joolia it really does feel like its rapidly getting worse. I suspect there's some macabre race to the bottom with social media as all sorts graphic content continues to pop up on social media.
Catherine is not complacent@joolia “if it bleeds it leads”.
The MSM loves sensationalism.
The MSM loves sensationalism.