BLAMING THE MEDIA….I was watching our local news last night and the anchorman was in high dudgeon about how badly the media screwed up by giving so much attention to John Mark Karr. This morning, I see that Howard Kurtz is saying the same thing (“Aren’t the TV types who pumped up this empty balloon just a little bit ashamed?”). Without looking, I have a feeling that a lot of other people are singing out of the same hymn book.
Color me confused. Sure, the collective TV news Borg embarrassed itself with its obsessive JMK coverage, but what else is new? I don’t quite get why they should be especially embarrassed over this particular feeding frenzy. Is it because it turned out he didn’t do it? But that wasn’t their fault: half the cops and district attorneys in Colorado we’re saying he was the guy. Were the news hounds supposed to just ignore them?
Look. Any news channel that didn’t cover JMK 24/7 would have seen its audience defect en masse to a channel that did. Any media star that ignored the story would have seen the public stampede to a competitor who was covering it. Blaming the media is a little disingenuous, no? The fault, dear readers, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves. If we’re gong to bash the media, let’s at least pick a topic where the media itself is more to blame than we are ourselves.
