this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Couple different factors there, but it mostly just comes down to some easily explainable things. A shooter without a motive isn't a story that sells well, and it isn't a story that people generally want to read. Your highest profile american crimes tend to be perpetrated by extreme weirdos. I think it's probably just that this guy was kind of a sad old dude, and probably a pedo to boot, so it doesn't really make for a nice, harrowing story. It's just depressing, mostly.

Most readers, I think, want a kind of, narrative, or meta-narrative, around their media consumption. You can see people in this thread, trying to stamp one onto this shooting with the whole bump-stock thing, which I think is mostly just a minor aside, but for the fact that it kind of ties into a larger narrative about gun control, a larger meta-narrative, that serves political ends. Even in that, though, it's not a very good grafting subject for those stories. The fact that it was passed by a republican president means that it can't really serve mainstream political party end-goals, and bump stocks aren't really a significant concern, despite how people might want to make them out to be. Basically their only tactical use case is something like this, otherwise, they're mostly a toy. They don't really have the same use-case for gang violence, like you might see with glock switches. So they don't really present a highly defensible instance of gun control going wrong, and they don't present a high-priority target in terms of gun control legislation.

It is almost impossible for most places to do reporting in a way where you are ever given the full scope, the full picture. It's hard to report sobering data which might give you the larger picture, because it's uncertain, up for contestation, boring, and unrelatable. It's hard to report on everything in an indiscriminate way, if you're just reporting everything without any bigger picture questions, then you're liable to simply serving stories with no external context that would ground the reader, and you lead the reader to only ground themselves. If you do this enough, in combination with the A-B testing that might tell you what to actually report on, you'll just end up becoming 24 hour nightly news, where you just report on murder and rapes and serve political agendas without any real knowledge of what you're doing. Things have to inherently be passed through the filter of a meta-narrative in order for them to make any sense, to have any meaning at all. If you can't really do that, if all you're left with is meaningless violence, you will probably just see people ignore it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

It's because something like 2 mass shooting occur EACH DAY in the US. It's impossible to keep track and that's why this has faded away.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Whenever I see posts like this, I wonder about the benchmark being set.

I don't know what OP wants... a weekly news story: "VEGAS SHOOTING STILL NOT SOLVED, NEWSPAPER EDITORS SEEK ALTERNATE HEADLINES"

DB Cooper was one of the most mysterious hijackers of all time. Still no motive, why don't we hear about it more often?

Zodiac killer, active for years on the West Coast. No known motive... why don't we hear about it? Why does no one mention it?

Jack the Ripper, killed women brutally, unsolved, no known motive. Why isn't he mentioned more often?

This line of thinking drives me crazy. Our current news ecosystem thrives off cheap clickbait and manufactured outrage. Barring some radical new information, they won't get that out of the Vegas shooting, hence it doesn't make headlines routinely.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So you are saying that the answer is a serious lack of proper investigative journalism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Clickbait is easy, investigative journalism takes brains, effort and integrity, all of which are lacking in today's media organizations.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

We don't hear about it because we don't live in the USA

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This, like any event, comes down to what the family does to keep a case going. There’s many cold cases that are now getting solved by family members rather than police.

There is no agency out there that will keep interest in an issue.

once the media is done with it(they have a super short attention span) and the police will spend all of a few weeks on most things it is the family that keep the interest going. They will pay out of pocket to get attention for it.

There’s even cases where family members that have investigated into commercial air craft incidents because they lost loved ones and helped solve cases on that.

Believe it or not there are people calling the police every day just to keep their attention on a missing person or murder, asking for new leads. These are family members.

Police will not do this on their own.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Worse: the police DO NOT SOLVE CRIME. Think of all the hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits. Think of all the stories about someone being murdered because the police decided that it was a "civil" matter.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

nobody ever talks about enron anymore. The CEO only got like 5 years for that. Nobody talks about nortel anymore, the CEO got no time for that, and a shit ton of money, all the employees had no pension.

Etc, etc, etc...

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

In 2024 there have been more "mass shooting events" in the US than there have been days in 2024.

One that happened 7 years ago isn't top of mind for most people.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

It's because of what you said: no motive. Crime like this is only sensational when the motive can be applied to some fictional stereotype of villain that could be stopped by new legislation or a war or whatever.

Also I think a big reason we don't discuss this specific event is the caliber of rifle used. Contrary to popular belief, non "assault" weapons can do a shocking amount of damage in an environment where the targets can't retaliate. See the Virginia Tech shooting.

Long story short: if it ain't political and can't be made political, people in the US won't care for long.

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