Originally Posted by kane

To some degree I will agree that the media has affect on the amount of social impact a story has. In this particular case, however, the school shooting has a much bigger social impact even if both stories got equal air time. The reason is the circumstances surrounding it. Most typical people who have kids never in a million years would take a gun and shoot them. The idea of that is unfathomable to them and so therefor there is no connection to the story where the guy killed his family. However, most parents also send their kids to school so the idea of someone shooting them while they are in school and you being helpless to stop it has a much larger impact. The average person can look at the family shooting and say, "I would never do that." They look at the school shooting and say, "I hope that never happens to me and how can I prevent it."



I agree and already stated so above. If they reported this kind of thing every time it happened it would be all that the news ever reported.



Yes and No. Yes, it is less tragic. Call me crazy, but I see five dead people as less tragic than 20 dead people especially when you consider the circumstances. Should the story with the fewer people be ignored? No. Is it? No. It just isn't a national story.

Answer me this: If you turned on CNN or whatever national news channel you liked and 80% of what they covered were killings from around the country every single day how often would you watch the news? Big news stations tackle the stories they feel their viewers want to see and the leave other stuff up to other outlets.