Why is everyone losing their minds about Christchurch?

[Yerda]

Its all over the news. People are freaking out. People are calling this the worst atrocity in modern history.

In New Zealand I'm sure it is.

 

[serp777]

I'm sure if they were not primarily Muslim immigrants, you would not be making this post. Don't worry - the next time some loser white guy with an AR-15 mows down a bunch of innocent people or a lunatic jihadist kills a bunch of white people, we'll have forgotten about this. Give it a month or so.

yeah and you don't care a lick about the Christians in Africa who are slaughtered monthly. Them being immigramts and Muslims is irrelevant. I'd be saying the same thing if people were getting hysterical about 50 Buddhists. There's ironic self righteousness oosing from your post. You
just care about this more because you've been manipulated by the media. I just value lives more equally than you.

 

[serp777]

In New Zealand I'm sure it is.

No in the United States it's all over the news. Social media is blowing up. People are making vigils in the street.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

yeah and you don't care a lick about the Christians in Africa who are slaughtered monthly. Them being immigramts and Muslims is irrelevant. I'd be saying the same thing if people were getting hysterical about 50 Buddhists. There's ironic self righteousness oosing from your post. You
just care about this more because you've been manipulated by the media. I just value lives more equally than you.

Context is a thing, you know.

 

[serp777]

From my point of view, here in America, I was shocked to find the trump style hatred had gotten clear to NZ. The rest of your argument, I don't even want to respond to.

Oh give it a rest. You clearly think you're so morally Superior and it's amusing. And let me guess you think Trump caused all this. Are you familiar with Trump derangement syndrome?

 

[serp777]

There is a ton of moral outrage about that. Do you not remember all those high school students organizing mass rallies about this very issue?
2018 United States gun violence protests - Wikipedia


And a number of different "solutions" have been proposed, and/or passed:

Gun debate: Here are the proposals that Congress is considering
What are the new gun laws in 2019?

And if I'm not mistaken, the Prime Minister of New Zealand has said they are going to toughen up gun laws in light of the recent attack.

I remember and I was saying the exact same thing I am now. That people are being overdramatic and hysterical. The people and media are very arbitrary about which atrocities they deem are worthy to care about. Even still I think the moral outrage for this event is even more significant

 

[serp777]

So you're confusing the significance and impact of a single, high-body count instance of violence (the 8th largest in history, according to a previous post) with the overall gun homicide rate of an entire country.

And your point is... What?


This argument is totally baseless. The Manchester Evening News Arena attack perpetrated by a Muslim terrorist stayed in the news cycle here for months. The attacks in Paris and London were similar. The idea that this particular event is being given "undue attention" because of media bias against rightwing extremism is entirely imagined.


Nobody said we "shouldn't care". They're simply pointing out the reasons why these types of things don't remain in the news cycle as much as things like the NZ shooting. They're not saying they "care less" about them, just that there are reasons why news outlets tend to focus more on them, and it's not because of a bias against right-wing extremists.

The point is that gun violence and massacres happen all the time. And it's not baseless. Where was the news coverage for the four Christian villages that were basically annihilated in the past few weeks? Or how about the 453 Islamic terrorist attacksin 2018. We hardly heard anything. This story went viral extremely fast and gained incredible popularity in social media. People are donating to the victims families and hosting vigils all over the country. And if you think the left leaning media isn't using this tragedy as a political tool to advance certain agendas then I guess you're not aware of well substantiated media bias. It was an alt right psychopath and they knew they could score political points. I can find you plenty of evidence of media bias and the media advancing and focusing on certain stories when it favors their narrative. The amount of attention devoted to this particular atrocity compared to the thousands of others is a pretty clear demonstration but there are actually studies as well.

And effectively people are saying we should not care as much. They're not literally saying thatbut if you spend most of your attention on a particular issue you likely care about it more. We have a limit of how much we can care. I don't see a bunch of vigils and donations for the remaining people in those Christian villages or vigils for each Islamic terrorist attack.

 

[serp777]

If you are going to cite stats, please break them down for us.

I feel no moral outrage if someone kills an armed intruder,
nor if the police sniper takes out some deserving badguy.

No moral outrage over accidents either, unless directed
at, say, a negligent parent.

Please identify where we should feel outrage, and
attach numbers to that.

As a rule, the "where is the moral outrage"
is a bit of tiresome rhetoric, but to the extent
that it might be a real question, I'd say that
outrage fatigue might be it. So many things
to be outraged about!

Priests, corruption, inept officials, insane
immigration policy, third world atrocities...

Yeah that's a great point so why does this particular attrocity deserve so much attention when so many other things are forgotten about essentially. My point is that people need to get some perspective

 

[Ellen Brown]

Oh give it a rest. You clearly think you're so morally Superior and it's amusing. And let me guess you think Trump caused all this. Are you familiar with Trump derangement syndrome?

If you are so ignorant to not know about what is being said about the attacker, and confirmed ...

 

[Dan From Smithville]

They want us all to be at each other's throats; so they probably did this to anger Muslims. You always know the agendas being pushed by what the MSM focuses on the most and pushes the hardest. Your governments are doing false flag attacks on you and then blaming this or that group for it. Same with 9-11! Like Muslim terrorists care about doing things by numerology! No, only numerologist magicians care about the numbers. So now you know who the real terrorists are.

Only sheeple will deny that the world is controlled by numerologist magicians without researching it; to see if it's true.

Deny it. I am counting on the numerologist magicians. It all adds up to me. You may think they are up to the usual dirty tricks, but they are doing something with one hand while using the other to pull something out of their hat. They are the kind of cold, calculating leadership that this world needs.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Africans killing Africans is hardly a trend.

It looks to me as if there is a trend toward
portraying the Muslims as victims, and to promote
white people, men especially, as the world's great
villains. So examples to illustrate that are cherished.

What grand geopolitical point is there
to be made if some Africans kill some other Africans?

I have not seen anyone blaming 'white men' for this. Unfortunately I have seen some white men blaming Muslim immigration.

 

[serp777]

Why did they cover 9/11 so much when millions die of cancer each year? Why bother mentioning ebola outbreaks when lack of access to clean water kills more each year? Political pandering and virtue signalling...

Funny how people only start to critique the concept of news value when it is ideologically convenient...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_values#Conditions_for_news

• Frequency: Events that occur suddenly and fit well with the news organization's schedule are more likely to be reported than those that occur gradually or at inconvenient times of day or night. Long-term trends are not likely to receive much coverage.
• Familiarity: To do with people or places close to home.
• Negativity: Bad news is more newsworthy than good news.
• Unexpectedness: If an event is out of the ordinary it will have a greater effect than something that is an everyday occurrence.
• Unambiguity: Events whose implications are clear make for better copy than those that are open to more than one interpretation, or where any understanding of the implications depends on first understanding the complex background in which the events take place.
• Personalization: Events that can be portrayed as the actions of individuals will be more attractive than one in which there is no such "human interest."
• Meaningfulness: This relates to the sense of identification the audience has with the topic. "Cultural proximity" is a factor here—stories concerned with people who speak the same language, look the same, and share the same preoccupations as the audience receive more coverage than those concerned with people who speak different languages, look different and have different preoccupations.
• Reference to elite nations: Stories concerned with global powers receive more attention than those concerned with less influential nations.
• Reference to elite persons: Stories concerned with the rich, powerful, famous and infamous get more coverage.
• Conflict: Opposition of people or forces resulting in a dramatic effect. Stories with conflict are often quite newsworthy.
• Consonance: Stories that fit with the media's expectations receive more coverage than those that defy them (and for which they are thus unprepared). Note this appears to conflict with unexpectedness above. However, consonance really refers to the media's readiness to report an item.
• Continuity: A story that is already in the news gathers a kind of inertia. This is partly because the media organizations are already in place to report the story, and partly because previous reportage may have made the story more accessible to the public (making it less ambiguous).
• Composition: Stories must compete with one another for space in the media. For instance, editors may seek to provide a balance of different types of coverage, so that if there is an excess of foreign news for instance, the least important foreign story may have to make way for an item concerned with the domestic news. In this way the prominence given to a story depends not only on its own news values but also on those of competing stories. (Galtung and Ruge, 1965)
• Competition: Commercial or professional competition between media may lead journalists to endorse the news value given to a story by a rival.
• Co-optation: A story that is only marginally newsworthy in its own right may be covered if it is related to a major running story.
• Prefabrication: A story that is marginal in news terms but written and available may be selected ahead of a much more newsworthy story that must be researched and written from the ground up.
• Predictability: An event is more likely to be covered if it has been pre-scheduled. (Bell, 1991)
• Time constraints: Traditional news media such as radio, television and daily newspapers have strict deadlines and a short production cycle, which selects for items that can be researched and covered quickly.
• Logistics: Although eased by the availability of global communications even from remote regions, the ability to deploy and control production and reporting staff, and functionality of technical resources can determine whether a story is covered. (Schlesinger, 1987)
• Data: Media need to back up all of their stories with data in order to remain relevant and reliable. Reporters prefer to look at raw data in order to be able to take an unbiased perspective.

This whole post is a straw man fallacy and is extremely simplistic. I'm not saying the media shouldn't cover major events because more people in general die--that's a straw man. I've never said that. I think its fair to cover the Christchurch shooting and to admit it was tragic, then move on since relatively speaking it was a small event. I brought up gun violence deaths and other shootings to show how commonplace it is. I'm calling out the hysteria and excessive attention surrounding it. It is receiving undue attention to score political points because it was perpetrated by an alt right psychopath, which the media and left wing pundits can use.

9/11 on the other hand destroyed multiple buildings and killed thousands in a major US city. It was one of the largest and most destructive terrorist attacks that ever occurred. It was vastly more news worthy and is a very rare occurrence.

Here's an analogy to my position: It would be like if there was a terror attack that was 4 times worse than 9/11 in a primarily republican city, which occurred in the preceding weeks and the media barely registered it as a footnote. Then 9/11 comes along in a predominantly liberal city and suddenly gets all this media attention, social media coverage, virtue signaling, etc. It wouldn't make sense and it would look like political pandering. You'd rightly point out that everyone just ignored the thing that was 4 times worse and that now it showing up in the media to score political points. Now imagine there are 9/11 events or worse occurring every other day throughout the year. Then try telling me that the one that occurs in a liberal city and receives significant coverage isn't political or biased.

I also would say that 9/11 was over blown in terms of the amount of attention it received. It deserved to receive a lot but it is still getting crazy levels of attention. I mean you'd think from the attention it was getting that millions just died. The same hysteria eventually lead to a stupid war in Iraq and the introduction of several Orwellian laws.

You need to think more in depth about the argument here and stop making 1 dimensional straw-men.

 

[serp777]

Population percentage-wise, it's roughly equivalent to 3500 Americans being killed in a single incident.

Ok then the attacks which wiped out something like 80% of the population in 4 Christian village in Africa was roughly equivalent to 350,000,000 Americans being killed. I don't see what your point is with this statistic. I don't understand why we would use a population percentage when it could lead to such a severe reductio ad absurdum, .

 

[serp777]

I'd say it has received less overall publicity than the Bataclan attack.

Why then should this one be primarily considered as 'political pandering and virtue signalling'?

Yeah it was also excessive and over dramatized. Also its been a few years now so obviously I would expect it to have more publicity. But in this case I don't know if there was a political underpinning. You might make a good case that the reason this became so prominent was because the right wanted to score political points against Muslim immigration into the EU. That's entirely plausible.

 

[serp777]

I remember just as much outrage and weeks of sympathy pouring in from all over the world following the terrorist attack on the Manchester Evening News Area by an Islamic terrorist, so this allegation is absolutely baseless and totally contradicted by reality.

Meanwhile there were 453 Islamic terror attacks in 2018 which were mostly a footnote or not even mentioned. Also that one didn't show up for long on the mainstream media cycle. Its significance in social media was minimal compared to Christchurch and I don't know where you're getting weeks, it was more like a day or two. I'd also say the hysteria in that case was excessive as well considering all of the other attacks that had occurred during that time period. What's your point exactly? The media either arbitrarily or for political reasons will decide to advance a story and people get hysterical. I've never suggested that the media only perpetuates stories for political reasons, just that the current Christchurch example is political. I think i've made a good case for why this is political

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

then move on since relatively speaking it was a small event.

50 Muslim immigrants being gunned down while peacefully worshipping in a mosque by a white supremacist in a relatively quiet country with low violence and stricter gun control, along with the context of rising far-right movements and attacks on immigrants across the West, is a shocking thing. Hardly a "small event". It poses serious questions over where our civilization is headed. It pertains to the West, so of course those stories will have more of an impact here than stories on Africa or Asia that don't have anything to do with the West.

 

[serp777]

50 Muslim immigrants being gunned down while peacefully worshipping in a mosque by a white supremacist in a relatively quiet country with low violence and stricter gun control, along with the context of rising far-right movements and attacks on immigrants across the West, is a shocking thing. Hardly a "small event". It poses serious questions over where our civilization is headed. It pertains to the West, so of course those stories will have more of an impact here than stories on Africa or Asia that don't have anything to do with the West.

Its an extremely small event relatively speaking. I mean when you think about it in the context that 100 times as many people die from choking each year, and that whole villages are being gunned down all over the world, this becomes barely noteworthy.

And this is the same over dramatic hysteria that is gripping the media right now. Oh white supremacists are gaining a foothold and are assaulting Muslim immigrants in Western countries. The racists and the alt right are taking over!!!! The media is sure perpetuating this narrative. That's why they've adopted this Christchurch story and are advanced it so much. It strengthens this narrative. In fact the manifesto of the shooter makes the claim that his goal was to make the media and the identitarian left totally hysterical and start over reacting. In reality 99.99% of immigrant deaths are going to be from mundane things like car accidents, old age, and eating too much saturated fats . We need to keep things in perspective here and not overreact by creating a bunch of Orwellian censorship laws or something. I just don't understand why people are accepting this idea that Western civilization is being taken over by the alt right. If anything Western nations are becoming tremendously more Muslim.

It pertains to the West, so of course those stories will have more of an impact here than stories on Africa or Asia that don't have anything to do with the West.

As i've mentioned before this idea/implication that somehow these third world countries are less deserving of attention is kind of ridiculous. A fallacy in human nature shouldn't be a justification for why we should care about this particular attack more. I find the annihilation of 4 Christian villages in Africa to be much worse since many more people died. Just because they're in Africa doesn't mean we should care about them less.

 

[Curious George]

This whole post is a straw man fallacy and is extremely simplistic. I'm not saying the media shouldn't cover major events because more people in general die--that's a straw man. I've never said that. I think its fair to cover the Christchurch shooting and to admit it was tragic, then move on since relatively speaking it was a small event. I brought up gun violence deaths and other shootings to show how commonplace it is. I'm calling out the hysteria and excessive attention surrounding it. It is receiving undue attention to score political points because it was perpetrated by an alt right psychopath, which the media and left wing pundits can use.

9/11 on the other hand destroyed multiple buildings and killed thousands in a major US city. It was one of the largest and most destructive terrorist attacks that ever occurred. It was vastly more news worthy and is a very rare occurrence.

Here's an analogy to my position: It would be like if there was a terror attack that was 4 times worse than 9/11 in a primarily republican city, which occurred in the preceding weeks and the media barely registered it as a footnote. Then 9/11 comes along in a predominantly liberal city and suddenly gets all this media attention, social media coverage, virtue signaling, etc. It wouldn't make sense and it would look like political pandering. You'd rightly point out that everyone just ignored the thing that was 4 times worse and that now it showing up in the media to score political points. Now imagine there are 9/11 events or worse occurring every other day throughout the year. Then try telling me that the one that occurs in a liberal city and receives significant coverage isn't political or biased.

I also would say that 9/11 was over blown in terms of the amount of attention it received. It deserved to receive a lot but it is still getting crazy levels of attention. I mean you'd think from the attention it was getting that millions just died. The same hysteria eventually lead to a stupid war in Iraq and the introduction of several Orwellian laws.

You need to think more in depth about the argument here and stop making 1 dimensional straw-men.

His post wasn't a strawman at all. In fact, it addresses why one story is more newsworthy than another. Perhaps you misunderstood.

Now I wouldn't suggest that all facets were covered. For instance, it doesn't explain the lack of coverage of Iran Air Flight 655 - Wikipedia when that incident occurred. Nor does it explain the degree of preference for missing little white girls over other missing children, the degree preference of black victims of white police violence, the way stories that are picked up are framed and run etc. There are a lot of missing details. But as an overview, @Augustus did an exceptional job addressing your OP.

 

[Stevicus]

The point is that gun violence and massacres happen all the time. And it's not baseless. Where was the news coverage for the four Christian villages that were basically annihilated in the past few weeks? Or how about the 453 Islamic terrorist attacksin 2018. We hardly heard anything. This story went viral extremely fast and gained incredible popularity in social media. People are donating to the victims families and hosting vigils all over the country. And if you think the left leaning media isn't using this tragedy as a political tool to advance certain agendas then I guess you're not aware of well substantiated media bias. It was an alt right psychopath and they knew they could score political points. I can find you plenty of evidence of media bias and the media advancing and focusing on certain stories when it favors their narrative. The amount of attention devoted to this particular atrocity compared to the thousands of others is a pretty clear demonstration but there are actually studies as well.

And effectively people are saying we should not care as much. They're not literally saying thatbut if you spend most of your attention on a particular issue you likely care about it more. We have a limit of how much we can care. I don't see a bunch of vigils and donations for the remaining people in those Christian villages or vigils for each Islamic terrorist attack.

I don't know that people are saying we should not care as much. If you take away the politics, the labels, the nationalities, and the religions - then what you're left with is a bunch of innocent people murdered by some despicable miscreants - and who the heck knows how they got to that frame of mind or mode of thinking?

Whether it's the mosque in New Zealand or those Christian villages in Africa, it's a horrible thing, and I think there are many people who care about both.

In any case, I don't see it as some kind of contest where people are challenged to care more about one group of victims over another.

As to why there's more media coverage for attacks on Muslims than for attacks on Christians, I can't really say. I think the mainstream media tend to have a pro-corporate agenda, but that aside, journalism itself has declined in quality from what they used to be. Walter Cronkite would be turning in his grave if he could see just how low the news has gotten.

Just because they cover more of something doesn't necessarily mean that they care more about it. And when something like this does happen, one sort of expects to see the media give us some insight and clarity about what happened and why. But more often than not, they leave their readers/viewers with more questions than answers.

 

[serp777]

His post wasn't a strawman at all. In fact, it addresses why one story is more newsworthy than another. Perhaps you misunderstood.

Now I wouldn't suggest that all facets were covered. For instance, it doesn't explain the lack of coverage of Iran Air Flight 655 - Wikipedia when that incident occurred. Nor does it explain the degree of preference for missing little white girls over other missing children, the degree preference of black victims of white police violence, the way stories that are picked up are framed and run etc. There are a lot of missing details. But as an overview, @Augustus did an exceptional job addressing your OP.

But the thing is, I was never arguing that the media always selects news for political reasons. And of course I was never arguing, as he/she was implying, that there shouldn't be news coverage of something unless it has a comparable impact to deaths from cancer. I also wasn't arguing that there can't be multiple explanations for why something is receiving more coverage. So it was absolutely 100% a strawman and if you read my initial post you'll see i'm not making any of those claims. I also don't know why people keep bringing up other news stories as if that somehow disproves anything about my position. I'm not even talking about any other stories, just the Christchurch one. So people claiming that X story doesn't have a political explanation doesn't mean the Christchurch one doesn't.

Of course there is a wide spectrum of explanations for why certain things receive more coverage. I was never claiming otherwise. In this case however I think there's a good case to be made that the Christchurch story was advanced to pursue a left leaning political agenda. The main argument I made was that there were a number of worse atrocities preceding Christchurch that were hardly addressed, but as soon as its an alt right conservative killing a bunch of Muslim's, then suddenly the media and a considers this one of the greatest modern day tragedies. Now there could be other additional factors and its not like im saying this is certain proof or anything, but the main point of my post was also to tell people to stop being so hysterical about an over dramatized story. Its a reasonable hypothesis to propose that the often left leaning, biased media is selecting and advancing (or not selecting) certain stories to pursue a political agenda. Not all of them! but definitely its possible for some of them and Christchurch fits the pattern. Augustus did a terrible job misrepresenting my argument and creating a long pointless diatribe for other possible factors. It also missed the central point of the post.