According to a recent National Public Radio Broadcast, food poisoning kills an estimated 5,000 people in the U.S. each year. Medical errors killed as many as 100,000 people in hospitals last year. And about 1.3 million Americans will get skin cancer from the sun within the next 12 months. But few people are afraid of going out for a stroll on a clear day.
A sniper in the Washington, D.C., area shot 13 people over the past few weeks causing tourists to rethink their travel plans.
And the networks played along.
Two men were detained yesterday in connection with the shootings. Washington area residents are celebrating the end of their ordeal, but the television has not lost its momentum.
More than 180 people died in a bomb blast in Bali two weeks ago. CNN gave it a full day's worth of coverage before relegating it to the second half of Headline News. On the following Monday, the shooter struck again at a Maryland Home Depot.
As a journalist, I support the First Amendment in every respect. But just because news organizations are allowed to report a story as intensely as they want, doesn't necessarily mean that they should.
"The hunt for the sniper around Washington has become perhaps the ultimate TV reality show," read an article in Tuesday's USA Today. "Investigators are engaged in an extraordinary effort to communicate via live television with a killer whose face and name they don't know."
One of this week's major developments involved Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose addressing the sniper directly telling him to call a number he'd left behind.
No doubt this is a major story, well-worth a great deal of coverage, but there is such a thing as overkill. Earlier this week CNN sought out the perspective of infamous New York serial killer David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, who sent a letter to correspondent Rita Cosby.
"From the beginning this person, whether he is a lone gunman or a member of a terrorist group, is not shooting at people because he has anything against them, but rather his rage is directed at someone or something else," he wrote.
According to the USA Today article, one of Berkowitz's great thrills, while he was prowling the streets of the Big Apple, was the media attention he received, notably from the city's tabloid papers like the Post and New York Daily News.
The networks aren't quite as distasteful as the tabloids, but they are equally as sensationalistic.
The news has become a world of slick rifle target logos, and white vans. And the killers probably loved every second of the notoriety.
With the sniper, the networks created a repeat of last year's Anthrax scare, which made people afraid to open their mail.
Now they're afraid to take their kids to class. Even outside the D.C. area, many schools have canceled field trips, afraid of what might happen on the Mall or Pennsylvania Avenue. Never mind that post Sept. 11 security measures have probably transformed the tourist spots into virtual fortresses, making them safer than most places at home. Or that the children would probably have a better chance of getting hurt riding the bus to school, than walking up the steps of Capitol Hill.112->tC-Airline Peanuts.txtDNEditorial112SORT+â-¬+â-ä2AUDT
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