Another Day - Another School Shooting

Another day, another school shooting.  The news starved, ratings plunging media look for answers and solutions to attract viewers.  The questions must be answered quickly, and must be answered with quick and easy solutions and of course we must have talking heads and video.

 The result of this culture is that the solution comes out of sound bites not of any real analysis of the problem. 

What has come out of the San Diego shooting is that he was bullied.  But you also heard the usual knee jerk reaction of “gun control”.  The reason these items come to the fore is that they lend themselves to quick, or seemingly quick solutions.  So we will, I’m sure have a anti-bullying” program.  New ideas on gun control legislation will surface.  We are the penicillin generation.  A pill (substitute “government program” or new law) and we are all well.

But buried in the interviews was a throw off line… “…if he could have just got by the drugs, he was a great kid”.  Also the fact that parents were divorced was mentioned.   In looking for the problem and the solution, neither is examined.  I don’t know the situation, but divorce has a devastating effect on kids.  Add to that the fact that the kid was not with his mother and could only see her a couple times a year.  Nobody suggests that this may be the problem. 

Now add to this, drugs.  You have the problem looming large right before your face.  But this is ignored and the real reason is bullying!  Almost every kid has endured bullying in school.  True you can remember to this day something that happened decades ago on the schoolyard.  I am not minimizing the problem, but, get real.  

So why does the problem of divorce and drugs not get attention? As to parents,  I’ll tell you why.  It is too close to home.  It does not lend itself to quick solutions or a new law.  When parents abdicate their responsibility to their kids to satisfy their own “feelings”, ignore drug use you have a wonderful incubator for problems. 

On the marriage issue, it seems that “everybody is doing it”.  A lot of kids seem to endure this major uprooting and do well, so why not satisfy my selfish needs?  You can overlook this huge problem, but it will come back to bite you later in life.  We see it all over our society if only we would look. 

As to the drug problem, parents are basically clueless about the drug use of kids.  They like it like that.  See no problem, no need to confront it!  They know that there is no quick-fis for that problem! 

As to the media, why they don’t focus on divorce and drugs in this story?.  It opens up a mess, a mess that they cannot bundle up in quick sound bites and move on to the next story.  It is a problem that society cannot treat with penicillin and be all better. 

Another media problem is the media.  We are addicted to the news stations in a disaster.  The media need pictures and somebody talking.  They will put on anyone that is close to the situation and is willing to talk, never mind the quality of the talk.  When it is hard to get a “talker” they replay their best sound bite again and again along with their best video.  As more and more information becomes available the story changes. 

So, what to do?  I would come back to this media… the good old low-tech daily newspaper.  Not so flashy, no gory pictures and can you imaging, it comes out hours after the event, might be up to a full day!  In today’s society, hours are equivalent to 1950 days! We want it quick, we want it now and we want it whenever we flick on the TV.  We don’t seem to care about quality. 

The newspaper has a great advantage that seems to be a disadvantage.  They have the time to wait for more information, they have the time to think, they have the time to check a source, they have the time to get it closer to the real truth.  

In almost every case we would be better off if we waited for tomorrow’s mornings paper. Of course we would have been deprived of the endless helicopter shots, the up close, offensive and invasive pictures of grief and the repeat and repeat of a worried parents.  All we can do without and we just might to get the perspective that lends itself to the real problem and the real solution.