Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking soundbites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, ‘that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘The Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machinegun?”

The obscure 1995 Leonardo DiCaprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. Kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, “The NBC Nightly News” and other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them.

The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

Roger Ebert (via confusedtree)

I knew this anecdote before i got halfway through it. That doens’t make it any less true, it just makes it sad that people have felt the need to share it so often.

(via eddplant)

Source: yeezytaughtme

Joe Rickey Hundley, the business executive who slapped a two-year-old toddler on a plane — dropping a racial slur in the process — is now out of a job, the Associated Press reports.

wilwheaton:

shortformblog:

Al Haase, president and CEO of AGC, issued a statement early Sunday that, while not referring to Hundley by name, called reports of behavior by one of its executives on recent personal travel “offensive and disturbing” and said he “is no longer employed with the company.” Keeney would not say whether Hundley was fired or resigned. Hundley was president of AGC’s Unitech Composites and Structures unit.

Hundley was charged last week in federal court in Atlanta with simple assault for allegedly slapping the 2-year-old boy during the Feb. 8 flight. His attorney, Marcia Shein, of Decatur, Ga., said Saturday that Hundley will plead not guilty. The charge carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail.

When speaking to the mother, Joe Rickey Hundley reportedly told the child’s mother, Jessica Bennett, to “shut that (N-word) baby up” before slapping him, adding an extra level of messed-up-ness to the story.

The level of entitlement that makes a person think they can do this sort of thing is incredible. I’m not saying I want this guy’s life to be ruined, but I’m not not saying that.

I feel he got what he deserved, inebriation isn’t an excuse to be a dick and and who the hell hits another person’s child? I don’t believe in hitting a child in the first place, but is wasn’t his responsibility to any extent. I’m glad this is getting this type of publicity, but this still had to be horrible for that mother. Flying with a child is its own rigmarole but then this circus, it has to be stressful.

Source: shortformblog

On the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we reaffirm its historic commitment to protect the health and reproductive freedom of women across this country and stand by its guiding principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters, and women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care. Today and every day, my Administration continues our efforts to reduce unintended pregnancies, support maternal and child health, and minimize the need for abortion. On this anniversary, we recommit ourselves to supporting women and families in the choices they make and redouble our efforts to promote safe and healthy communities.
President Obama on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (via barackobama)
quickhits: Effort to blame everything but guns for violence begins to turn a bit creepy. Raw Story: A Connecticut community is to hold an amnesty of violent video games in the wake of last month’s mass shooting in Newtown. Organisers Southington SOS plan to offer gift certificates in exchange for donated games, which will be burned. The group, a coalition of local organisations, says its actions do not assert that video games were the cause of the killings in nearby Newtown, but argues that violent games and films desensitize children to “acts of violence”. Except they don’t: A study by Texas A&M university last year found that exposure to violent games “had neither short-term nor long-term predictive influences on either positive or negative outcomes”. Christopher J Ferguson, one of the report authors, wrote in Time magazine in December that “there is no good evidence that video games or other media contributes, even in a small way, to mass homicides or any other violence among youth”. Besides, there’s no evidence that Adam Lanza was influenced by video games in any way. Absolutely none. We don’t even know if he was a gamer. This is all a desperate attempt to take the heat off guns by scapegoating First Amendment rights and organizing a 21st century version of book burning. If you want to solve the problem, then the problem is guns. Get cracking. If you don’t want to solve the problem, then you pull bullshit stunts like this one. Come the fuck on! You’re not getting to the source of the problem. Misplacing fault like this, is harmful. 
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quickhits:

Effort to blame everything but guns for violence begins to turn a bit creepy.

Raw Story:

A Connecticut community is to hold an amnesty of violent video games in the wake of last month’s mass shooting in Newtown.

Organisers Southington SOS plan to offer gift certificates in exchange for donated games, which will be burned. The group, a coalition of local organisations, says its actions do not assert that video games were the cause of the killings in nearby Newtown, but argues that violent games and films desensitize children to “acts of violence”.

Except they don’t:

A study by Texas A&M university last year found that exposure to violent games “had neither short-term nor long-term predictive influences on either positive or negative outcomes”. Christopher J Ferguson, one of the report authors, wrote in Time magazine in December that “there is no good evidence that video games or other media contributes, even in a small way, to mass homicides or any other violence among youth”.

Besides, there’s no evidence that Adam Lanza was influenced by video games in any way. Absolutely none. We don’t even know if he was a gamer. This is all a desperate attempt to take the heat off guns by scapegoating First Amendment rights and organizing a 21st century version of book burning. If you want to solve the problem, then the problem is guns. Get cracking.

If you don’t want to solve the problem, then you pull bullshit stunts like this one.

Come the fuck on! You’re not getting to the source of the problem. Misplacing fault like this, is harmful. 

barackobama: Neil’s spirit of discovery lives on in all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the unknown—including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space. That legacy will endure—sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one small step. —President Obama on the passing of Neil Armstrong
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barackobama:

Neil’s spirit of discovery lives on in all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the unknown—including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space. That legacy will endure—sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one small step.

—President Obama on the passing of Neil Armstrong

(via bcfortenberry)

Source: barackobama

The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about Basketball Diaries?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”


In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

Roger Ebert  (via animalmysoul)

(via oldfilmsflicker)

Source: ibad

Can we talk about the nonsense of caring about which news outlet first reports a big piece of news? I’m not talking about a genuine scoop—a report that wouldn’t have otherwise come to light—but about news that we’re all eventually going to find out anyway. Who Mitt Romney selects to be his running-mate, for instance, or whether the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate.

I know I’m often out-of-the-loop when it comes to journalism norms and conventions, but this one honestly confounds me. Has any publication ever received a Pulitzer for being the first to report a major announcement? Is there some secret reward at stake—free cookies for a year? A trip to Hawaii? Do colleagues buy you a drink to congratulate you on beating the other networks by ten seconds?

Because if this is just about bragging rights, it needs to stop. Now. And not just because it can lead to some outlets rushing to report incorrect information, as CNN and FOX did with the recent Supreme Court decision on health care reform. But because the race to be first is no longer just a feature of news coverage but often the main factor driving it.

Amy Sullivan, The New Republic. Who Reported It First? Who Cares?

With the Supreme Court about to announce their decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act our (mostly cable) media were chomping at the bit to be first out of the gate with some BREAKING NEWS.

CNN, as we know, fell flat on its face. It’s been struck down, they reported incorrectly. Their amplification machine went into overdrive with banner headlines on CNN.com and posts on social media until Wolf Blitzer — in purely Wolf Blitzer moment — helpfully illuminated us all.

“It’s getting a little more complicated,” he said.

As Sullivan points out: “His remark, of course, referred to the network’s own coverage. The court’s decision couldn’t have gotten more complicated because it was final, set down on paper.”

Sullivan’s article is well worth the read. Yes, there’s some importance to speed, she writes, but the media focuses too much on getting it first on too many stories where getting it first really isn’t important. Like, say, a Supreme Court announcement that everyone will hear about when it’s actually announced.

If the topic interests you, check out her follow-up. And if your journo-geekery runs real deep, head over to SCOTUSblog where Tom Goldstein walks 7,000 plus words through a minute by minute account of how CNN and Fox got their reporting wrong, and who the whole media scrum works in cases such as this.

(via futurejournalismproject)

"During a Capitol press conference Thursday, (Michigan State Rep. Lisa Brown noted 'vagina' is the 'medically correct term' for the female organ at the center of the Legislature's ongoing abortion restriction debate. 'If I can't say the word vagina, why are we legislating vaginas?' Brown said. 'What language should I use? 'We're all adults here.'"

(via wilwheaton)

Source: inothernews