Uncategorized – Commentaries on Contemporary Media

Social media outlets have been posting like wildfire about the tragic death of three Muslim students in the Chapel Hill shooting on February 10 and the posts are enraged. The internet is partially enraged by the incident itself and partially irate that the main stream media wasn’t talking about the shooting. In the wake of the international outcry over Charlie Hebdo, the main stream has been quiet about the Chapel Hill shooting.

Several people have claimed that the Chapel Hill shooting hasn’t received wider national attention because the victims were Muslim. Or when the mainstream does cover it, they question whether or not the shooting actually is a hate crime. Others just can’t seem to understand why there was a delay in the media’s coverage on the shooting as news about the incident didn’t hit the headlines until the following day and even then it still took the mainstream a little while to catch up on what was going on.

Why was there a delay? Was it an issue of not knowing or not caring?

The New York Times wrote an article focusing on Democracy Now!‘s tendency to be the only outlet covering an important story or the only outlet to be there during the early days of the story. The article goes on to make Amy Goodman sound like she is going above and beyond the call of duty because she actually goes into the field to report. The issue with members of the media being mesmerized by Goodman doing her job points to a major issue with the mainstream outlets.

How is the media covering anything if they’re not going out into the field to figure out what’s going on? This particular article focuses on Goodman’s coverage of the early stages of Occupy Wall Street and the execution of Troy Davis because she and other journalists from Democracy Now! are actually reporting about what is happening on site.

Democracy Now! is filling a gap, but that gap shouldn’t exist in the first place if the mainstream media was actually getting out there and reporting.