Tough realizations to have over an Easter weekend. ![]() Until we adopt that adult viewpoint, we will continue to be surprised -and unprepared- when horrors happen. We need to “re-recognize” (my word) that evil exists, that up and down are still opposite directions, and there isn’t a your truth or my truth, there is only truth. We don’t want any more horrors, but we should realize that never having tragedy is a foolish dream, not a sensible acceptance of reality. Not because we’re radically different from our ancestors because we’ve effectively been inoculated to the horrors of life until-and unless- those horrors are visited upon us. Unfortunately, it seems more and more obvious that only tragedy brings out our humanity. Whether they were helping children flee yet another psycho looking to make a name for itself or digging through rubble, calling out “is anyone in there” they pulled together. Average people, some wearing whatever they were wearing when the tragedy struck, came alongside to help. Our first responders did what they were trained to do: ran into the hellstorms rather than running from them. It seemed the end wasn’t near it was here.īut we made it. First, a school shooting, then a military helicopter collision/crash, followed by a line of tornadoes that destroyed hundreds of home throughout the region and killed twenty-plus people. My region’s had a very tough news cycle of late. I wasn’t a fellow champion but I I was a fellow competitor. If I beat someone, I felt for them.īut at that point and going forward I could do something that I couldn’t do before: talk with champions about competition. But I would finish, even if I wanted to drop my equipment and crawl off the line out of embarrassment (and more than once I did). My goal was always simple: do the best I could and try to finish. Going In, I knew I had absolutely no chance at winning. That is the only reason I ever entered any shooting competitions. Same thing when it comes to describing something you’ve never experienced. If you don’t know you can’t imagine how ridiculous those “tough guy” pronouncements sound. Ignorant ones continue to blather about things they know nothing about. There’s a big difference.Įven stupid people are changed by tragedy. Today, comments I thought once made people sound tough just make them sound ignorant. And you can’t call back a bullet any more than you can un-ring a bell. I realize that for some, “my cold dead hands” would be a deal they’d gladly honor. How I’ve changed explains why I never joke about “from my cold dead hands” or say “I could/should have shot them.” I’ve seen both. ![]() Experiencing all of them will change you forever. ![]() Having smelled the distinct odor of a fatal house fire, heard the screams of bereaved parents and held the hand of someone critically injured as they succumbed to their injuries, I know that experiencing any of these things changes you. If it isn’t discernible by one of our senses, it’s pretty simple to dismiss any tragedy. When it comes right down to it, the oldest newsman’s axiom is still truest: “ all news is local.” They’re celebrating because not having to heat their homes means they might have enough money to make it through another month. Or that other neighbors are rejoicing the arrival of spring- storms and all. Instead of talking “trillions of dollars of debt” - which none of us understands, maybe reporters should focus on our neighbors that can only afford two meals a day due to inflation. That change-once personalization happens - may be the one thing convincing me we’re not too-far gone to save as a people. Personalization of tragedy changes how “the usual reporting” gets done. No tragedy is without victims, but seeing things up close and personal changes your perspective. The shift from dispassionate numerology to waving-armed, bleeding heart, compassion was stunning, but not surprising. Once that same line of storms came through our coverage area and wreaked havoc in a half-dozen communities around Nashville, it was wall-to-wall coverage. Nashville’s local news outlets were pretty ho-hum when reporting the devastation of a massive F-4 tornado that ripped through Mississippi, killing more than 20 people early last week. It’s math done cynically, but it’s even more true today that it was in 1973. A bus with 68 people on a religious pilgrimage plunging off a cliff 3,000 miles away, for example, didn’t have the same amount of viewer interest as a car crash that killed three teenagers twenty miles away. Our cynical formula said the amount of interest in a tragic foreign news event was equal to the body count over the mileage. ![]() In the news industry, we used to explain the amount of interest in foreign news stories using a rough mathematical formula.
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