Kirsten Powers: Mass Shootings Becoming ‘Too Routine’ for Media, Public to Really Care
In the wake of Monday’s tragic mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, Fox News’ Gregg Jarrett invited contributors Kirsten Powers and Lauren Ashburn on Happening Now to offer their thoughts on how the media has handled the story and its aftermath. With coverage of the shooting almost entirely faded from view just four days later, Powers suggested America may have finally become “numb” to mass shootings that have become all “too routine.”
Noting that the Navy Yard shooting “wasn’t getting quite the coverage” that other similar events have in the past, Powers said, “there was a time where if something like this happened, it really would have dominated our news.” She said she wonders if “it isn’t coming too routine, that people are almost numb to the idea this is what our society is like now, that people just show up and shoot people.”
Jarrett found merit in that point, saying that with 19 mass shootings since President Obama took office, Americans may be becoming “immune or even desensitized to what’s happening.”
Lauren Ashburn said the lack of attention may also have to do with the “mental health angle” of these stories. “My thinking behind this is that maybe mental health issues aren’t as sexy as other kinds of issues,” she said, citing terrorism and shooting that involve children as stories that the media is more eager to cover. It was left unsaid whether she thought those issues were “sexy.”
Jarrett also asked his guests about the timing of the “partisan tongue-lashing” President Obama deliver while the shooting aftermath was unfolding. “Do the media sort of take their cue from the president?” he asked. “He moved on pretty quickly. The American public, do they take their cue that way too?”
Powers pushed back on the idea that the president “moved on quickly,” saying at that time he may not have known the extent of the fatalities. “I felt like what he said was appropriate,” she said, “but maybe they should have scrapped the event once they saw this was unfolding.”
As for the potential of a revived gun control battle on Capitol Hill, Ashburn said Obama “fought that battle” already, “and he is on to fight another battle: Obamacare.”
Watch video below, via Fox News:
[photo via screengrab]
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