Reporters rooting through terror suspects’ belongings on MSNBC. (Screengrab: Slate)
Some would say Columbia Journalism Review put it mildly, referring to the events of December 4 as an “unbecoming media frenzy in San Bernardino.” That was the sight of dozens of TV crew members from MSNBC and CNN trampling through the home of alleged killers Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, rifling through whatever they came across, holding it up for the camera and guessing about its meaning.
Sample commentary from MSNBC‘s Kerry Sanders: “Come over here, you can see the baby’s toys. We have really quite a number of toys.” Sanders proceeded to show millions of viewers various photographs, we don’t know of whom, and for good measure, the driver’s license of Farook’s mother, including identifying information like her address.
We’re told the landlord assured that the police had released the scene; and the networks and their defenders, like Slate magazine, which called it “great TV,” tell us that “poking around” is what reporters do–though MSNBC apologized for showing identifying information. That misses the point that even if no laws were broken, this was not a news event; it shed no light on the December 2 attack. It was just, in CJR‘s words, “a frantic race to beat opponents and grab attention.” To say you see no difference between that sort of media pile-on and actual good journalism is a sorry admission indeed.
The New York Daily News (12/9/15) had a forceful response to Donald Trump’s call for Muslim exclusion.
Disheartening as it was, that spectacle was far from the lowest point of what AlterNet‘s Steven Rosenfeld described as the “bottomless season of nastiness, racist hate-mongering and war fever” that has swept through much of the media and political sphere in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre–not that it started there. As we see journalists entertain calls to ban all Muslims from the country, and local politicians like Nevada’s Michelle Fiore saying they’d like to personally shoot Syrian refugees in the head, it’s easy to despair–and to forget that it isn’t actually news media’s job to simply amplify such frightening rhetoric.
One thing journalists can do–besides show editorial outrage in the face of ignorant fear-mongering, as many are–is to ask, cui bono? Who benefits from tragic events like those in San Bernardino, or before that in Colorado Springs? Lee Fang explores one answer in a piece for The Intercept.
His review of investor transcripts for gun companies, ammunition manufacturers and sporting stores turned up numerous instances of executives discussing mass shooting incidents as lucrative–because they stir calls for gun control, which the National Rifle Association and other advocates predictably attack and use to stoke panic buying, which leads to profits.
The Intercept illustrated its piece on the profits from mass shooting with a photo of guns for sale (photo: Cengiz Yar Jr./AFP/Getty Images)
It makes sense, of course, but it’s still chilling to read the head of Dick’s Sporting Goods comment that the murders of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, “very much accelerated” gun business, not by spurring sales among hunters but by bringing “shooters into the industry.” A retailer notes that because his company “didn’t blink as others did to stop selling AR-15 platform guns” after the Newtown killings, their “business went vertical…. I mean it just went crazy.”
Gun control is a legislative, political and public health issue. Getting at what powerful actors are doing and why is harder than picking through baby toys on TV–it’s also more worthwhile.
Janine Jackson is the program director of FAIR and the host of CounterSpin.
This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission from FAIR.