So I was at the Deli at Pelham Falls earlier this evening grabbing a delicious burger special when I saw the local Greenville “News” rag had the shooting at the Empire State building as the front page lead. The headline was something like 2 Dead, 9 Wounded in Shooting at Empire State Building and went on to imply that there was a mass shooting. There wasn’t. Some tool who got fired shot someone he blamed for it, ran off and got gunned down by police who wounded all the bystanders in the process.
Here’s three problems I have with he way The Greenville News handled this story in no particular order:
1) Why is this headline news in Greenville? If you grow up in the northeast as I did you are taught that NYC is the cultural center of the world so you care about what goes on there. But here in the south crime in NYC isn’t actually all that important or relavant. Atlanta, Charlotte and Ashevile are all driving distance away and have serious crime problems that spill over into South Carolina in general and Greenville in particular and I’m sure there were shootings there recently. I know lots of New Yorkers and people from the surrounding areas have moved down here but does that mean our media has to cover every crime in transplant’s old stomping grounds?
If the coverage focused on the fact that the police shot nine innocent people while responding to a shooting – and that the person they were shooting didn’t even get a shot off – I could see why they would run this. But they just plugged in the AP report and acted like that was the news of the day for people in a county where a local government official was just locked up for kidnapping. Doesn’t sound like they think keeping locals informed is a priority.
2) The Title is Misleading. And I’m not just talking about the nine wounded part. The two dead in the report includes the murderer. I know you bleeding heart liberals think the murderer and the victim are equal and we should cry for both but I’m pretty sure the victim has a family that would appreciate a moral distinction between their loved one and the scumbag that murdered him. One person died in a shooting, the perpetrator of which was killed later by police. Lumping the two in together makes it seem as if there were two victims and a guy that murders someone he thought didn’t help him enough is not a victim.
3) This isn’t about “gun violence” and gun control laws. The shooter didn’t follow the laws already on the books in NYC. But more importantly the nine people wounded were ALL shot by cops. Next time some hippy tells you only “trained professionals” should have access to guns point this out while laughing in their faces. There’s a commenter that comes to an old post of mine complaining about the use of tasers and who has actually stated that tasers are too dangerous to use on a person so cops should shoot people in the legs to incapacitate them. I guess he’s a New Yorker.
But people like him, and Mayor Bloomberg, use tragedy to push political agendas but this case is about one murder in a city known for being violent and the subsequent mayhem caused by their police department. It proves nothing about gun laws and the real story is that cops in NYC are literally the gang that can’t shoot straight.
But that angle won’t help push a liberal agenda.
It’s just too bad Greenville doesn’t have a real newspaper to turn to for information.
