News

[prog]

Why is Google News not just the first but so far the only place I've heard anything about the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Djindjic? Granted, that means the story hasn't gotten enough NPR-play that I've noticed, but still, sheesh...

Also: Is there a non-cynical answer to the question about why the Elizabeth Smart story got big news, apparently starting with the girl's disappearance? It's certainly a happy thing to hear (and I'm made happier to hear that others are happy too), but I'd think that child kidnapping, and sometimes subsequent recovery, happens often enough around the country that a case involving otherwise unknown people shouldn't make national headlines. Of course, now it's interesting because there's a mutant religious nut involved and everyone loves to hear about that, but he didn't come into the story until just recently, right? (And I grant that I could be wrong about the Smart family being somehow famous before this... maybe I missed something.)

Comments

re. Elizabeth Smart

[ex-colorwhe.livejournal.com]

I don't think you missed anything. It seems to me there's something vaguely hegemonic when news stories with a)individual victims and 2)individual perpetrators get top headlines. Listeners get to hear about good guy/bad guy stuff and the dangers of the world (since everyone knows the world has dangers) without being forced to confront societal and institutionalized badness like poverty and hunger and homelessness and their consequences.

And gamma (following a and 2 above): if the victims are middle class or above, it keeps the story that much further away from poverty and hunger and that stuff. An individual perpetrator being homeless (as he seems to be in this case) won't make the story any less safe.

"Safe." That kind of news story is somehow safe. Safe from implications of -- gasp -- politics. Because how many listeners wouldn't be glad the girl made it home? I am. You are. See how we all agree about the nature of evil and everything under the sun? And aha -- that implication that we're all on the same side is very safe. And comforting. And hegemonic.

Perhaps especially comforting in the current political climate of disagreement and dissent.

Re: re. Elizabeth Smart

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

well said cw
also such stories feed into the idealized innocence that we must impute to childhood,
as the more adult-erated we become individually and societally.

Maya Angelou said it pretty well too, albeit in different context:
"I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world."