Happy New Year!!
It's my first entry for 2005. And three guesses as to what my main resolution for the New Year is...yep - it's the one I made when I started this blog, that I quite obviously was unable to keep:
To write more.
Or, to be more specific, to write in this weblog (doesn't count if I write in other journals either) at least once a week. That's the only resolution I'm making this year. We'll see how well I do at keeping it. This entry - I don't really have a topic for, but I'll write anyway. We had a pretty good holiday season. Kept it lowkey this year. Probably a good thing, since soon after Christmas, I got sick - just a cold, but I was pretty miserable for a couple days. I'm still a bit congested, but now the hubby's got it.. Except he's got a fever. Which I didn't have. So it's a bit different.
I know what I can write about - the tsunami. It's all that's been on the news the last week. Really tragic, and unbearably sad, what happened. My neighbor brought up a really good point though, and I'd like to throw it out there for public feedback:
When 9/11 happened, network (and cable news) offered up a number of photos of the destroyed twin towers. They showed people running, screaming, scared for their lives. They showed firefighters at work, they showed people helping others get to safety, etc. Yet not a single dead body was shown. They didn't show people jumping out of the towers, they didn't show any dead bodies on the ground, corpses being hauled to the morge, nothing.
Yet for the tsunami, they have no qualms about showing the bloated bodies of dead civilians, bodies piled in mass graves, rows and rows of bodies tagged and waiting for identification...
Why the difference? Why is it that for a catastrophe on American soil, where the majority of casualties are Americans, that news teams, "out of respect" avoid airing dead bodies and depicting the carnage in that way. Yet, for a disaster on the other side of the world, they appear unhesitant - almost eager - to show just how many lives were lost. My neighbor said it was blatant discrimination. I'd like to give Americans a chance to defend their media, offer any possible explanations for this discrepancy that may not have been entirely obvious to me or my neighbor.
Any thoughts?
To write more.
Or, to be more specific, to write in this weblog (doesn't count if I write in other journals either) at least once a week. That's the only resolution I'm making this year. We'll see how well I do at keeping it. This entry - I don't really have a topic for, but I'll write anyway. We had a pretty good holiday season. Kept it lowkey this year. Probably a good thing, since soon after Christmas, I got sick - just a cold, but I was pretty miserable for a couple days. I'm still a bit congested, but now the hubby's got it.. Except he's got a fever. Which I didn't have. So it's a bit different.
I know what I can write about - the tsunami. It's all that's been on the news the last week. Really tragic, and unbearably sad, what happened. My neighbor brought up a really good point though, and I'd like to throw it out there for public feedback:
When 9/11 happened, network (and cable news) offered up a number of photos of the destroyed twin towers. They showed people running, screaming, scared for their lives. They showed firefighters at work, they showed people helping others get to safety, etc. Yet not a single dead body was shown. They didn't show people jumping out of the towers, they didn't show any dead bodies on the ground, corpses being hauled to the morge, nothing.
Yet for the tsunami, they have no qualms about showing the bloated bodies of dead civilians, bodies piled in mass graves, rows and rows of bodies tagged and waiting for identification...
Why the difference? Why is it that for a catastrophe on American soil, where the majority of casualties are Americans, that news teams, "out of respect" avoid airing dead bodies and depicting the carnage in that way. Yet, for a disaster on the other side of the world, they appear unhesitant - almost eager - to show just how many lives were lost. My neighbor said it was blatant discrimination. I'd like to give Americans a chance to defend their media, offer any possible explanations for this discrepancy that may not have been entirely obvious to me or my neighbor.
Any thoughts?
posted by lavender | 8:09 PM
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