Last Updated on February 10, 2022
I read a blog post a pastor published Thursday in which he ranted about news coverage of the news crew killing in Virginia during a live interview the day earlier.
He claimed he listened for 10 minutes on his way to work to coverage that focused on the gunman, who had been identified as a former colleague of the two victims. He complained that the coverage included mentions of the names of other people in the past 20 years who had committed similar shocking crimes.
He complained the names of the victims weren’t as prominent as the name of their killer.
He complained that the reporters asked why someone would do something like this, then offered his own answer: that the media in this country is out to make heroes out of such people.
He then complained that someone who might be watching (or listening to) the coverage might be lonely and desperate for attention and may think this is a way to become “famous.”
I’m not sure where he looked or what he was listening to. Frankly, I saw plenty of coverage about the victims. I saw colleagues and family members interviewed. I saw coverage that quoted social media posts of the fiancés of the victims.
I saw stations across the country — even CNN — running WDBJ-TV’s live coverage Wednesday and I don’t know off the top of my head of any major network that didn’t air the clip of Thursday morning’s moment of silence the station held roughly 24 hours after the killing.
I know more about the reporter and her videographer and how highly regarded they were among their friends and coworkers than I would have ever known if the killing hadn’t happened.
The name of the killer and his background was certainly covered. But this is because people want to know — whether they choose to admit it or not — who’d do something so horrific. They want to know “because they can’t imagine doing anything like that themselves” — how anyone else possibly could. The killer’s motive is a critical part of the story as people processed what had happened.
No one in the media is trying to make a “hero” out of someone who killed two of their own. That doesn’t even make sense.
But the gunman is part of the story. Just as Satan is a part of the story of God and His Kingdom. Anyone who thinks the gunman is a hero seriously needs to seek help. Immediately.
I don’t see this pastor opting for a “fairy tale” approach to preaching that intentionally omits evildoers as he teaches about Jesus Christ.
Nor should he.
If the anger was genuine, before allowing his own to build so thoroughly, he might have considered James 1:19-20, which advises Christians to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.” Or perhaps even Proverbs 29:11, which teaches, “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.”
If he was so angry about what he was hearing, perhaps he shouldn’t have spent 10 minutes listening to it. There are other channels.
Those other channels might not have news coverage at al. But they might have programming — even music — that, in some way or another, contain content that might inspire a person to do bad things.
There’s virtually no way to stop a person who is mentally unstable from finding a trigger (or an excuse, whichever you prefer) to make them act out. And if the media would have spent what he considered an “appropriate” amount of time on the victims instead of the shooter, that’s still covering the story. It’s still giving attention to the crime. And by his logic, one could argue that in itself is still a potential trigger to make someone seek attention, even if they figure they’ll have less name recognition. (Once you’re dead, I respectfully suggest you have no way to observe or even care how much name recognition you get for a crime like that.)
Evil exists in the world. It is a sad fact of life, but a fact nonetheless. Something is going to set off someone else sooner or later. We need, unfortunately, reminders these days that evil happens out of the blue, when it’s least expected, to people who don’t deserve to be victims.
Not as a way, mind you, to make people shut down and give up, but rather to remind them that on some level, they need to be on their guard. Police do the same thing to help people avoid becoming victims of crime. Not long ago, community officers held meetings in my neighborhood and handed out pamphlets with multiple lists of guidelines to prevent yourself from being a victim of a crime. Should they not talk about crime at all? Would not talking about it make it just go away?
The fact so many people seem willing to ignore is that news is mostly about things that go wrong. If that news crew had completed its interview without incident, then returned to the station and carried on their day like normal, it wouldn’t have been covered because that wouldn’t be news.
And as someone who actually works in news, I can tell you that when we cover positive stories, the kind people claim they want to see more of, while we receive comments thanking us for covering something positive, we also receive snide comments asking if it’s “a slow news day” and others demanding to know, “Why is this news?”
It happens almost every single time. It’s impossible to please everyone; someone will always not like something. I’m sure a pastor is well aware of that, too. This particular pastor has even said from the pulpit how people have come up to him and complained about things he’s said on stage.
But here’s the clincher: he then decided to spin his little rant into a promo for the upcoming weekend’s church service, claiming he would give the “good news” the media doesn’t.
Excuse me?
You’re going to blast what you see as wholly inappropriate and then use that same thing as a marketing tool for, of all things, a church?
Suddenly, the “anger” seemed pretty disingenuous.
But maybe that’s just me.
