Letter from the Editor – July 23, 2012
Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a great weekend.
Many of you have no doubt heard about the shooting that took place in a Colorado movie theater during a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie. Twelve people lost their lives. They ranged in age from 51 years old, to six. As many as 61 others were wounded in some capacity. The gunman has been captured, and now the families of the victims, the town–the whole nation–wait to hear the reasons behind it.
The problem is that the media is hungry for facts, for exclusives, for anything that they can tie to their brand so that they can be the first to report. When there are no facts–or at least, when whatever facts are available dry up–they turn to conjecture. There’s nothing worse for a news station than the inability to report on the biggest story in the country right now.
So they begin to find any shred of a connection and squeeze it for information that doesn’t matter or isn’t even there. I listened to an interview today where someone spoke with a woman who worked at a convenience store that the gunman purchased soda and potato chips from a few times. What could she possibly know about him? How is her interview at all relevant? Other than giving a murderer even more air time and attention, what does that accomplish? The type of people who commit heinous acts of this nature crave this attention, and we give it to them without a second thought.
So there will be none of that here. Rather, I ask that you keep the victims and their families in your thoughts and disregard any nonsense that is thrust your way by the press–there will be a lot of it. Until any official report is released, there are no facts, just a bunch of people talking for the sake of it.
There are no new updates for this week. As always, our writers have done a fantastic job putting together articles for all of you and I hope you enjoy them.
Take care, have a great week, and as always, thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Ross Hammond, Editor