If the national news media are going to exploit a bunch of grieving children, shouldn’t they be required to at least make it interesting?
For more than a month we’ve been watching a handful of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors paraded across cable news and photographed for the front pages of magazines — but the most we’ve learned about them is that they want “change” and for Congress to “do something” about gun violence. (Sounds specific.)
This week’s issue of Time featured five of them with the word “ENOUGH.” written across the front.
TIME’s new cover: The school shooting generation has had enough https://t.co/4YI173gqTx pic.twitter.com/7yFEXuVjyb
— TIME (@TIME) March 22, 2018
That’s daring, and the kids are cute, but is there a point?
The article’s author, Time correspondent Charlotte Alter, summed up the way the survivors communicate: “They call their enemies names and hurl sick burns at politicians and lobbyists as if they’re shouting across the locker room.”
So does President Trump, but at least his White House has to answer for it every day from a ferocious press. Trump says he wants to cut immigration in half and an indignant Jim Acosta of CNN makes up a million reasons why foreigners have every reason to be here, including because the Statue of Liberty says so.
But reporters turn soft when it comes to covering the precious moments of Parkland.
Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Alter further explained the student activists’ formula for so-called success on pushing for gun control: “They’re funny, they’re entertaining. They call … B.S. on a lot of what the [National Rifle Association] and conservative politicians have been saying on this issue.”
OK. And now for the policy proposals?
We don’t know what they are because the media won’t ask them any questions — aside from the very professional, “Do you hate the NRA?”
On Feb. 19, five days after the mass shooting that killed 17 people, mostly students, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota asked survivors Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, “What do you say to the NRA?”
“Disband. Dismantle,” said Gonzalez.
“And don’t make another organization,” added Hogg.
Camerota followed up, “How do you expect politicians … to say no to the NRA?”
Gonzalez and Hogg responded by calling NRA members “killers” and “child murderers.”
Wow, that makes for a good opportunity to ask for their solutions or if they understand a 230-year-old roadblock called the Bill of Rights has done more to thwart gun regulation than the NRA ever will.
Instead, Camerota asked, “Hey guys, are you going to be able to go back to school this week or next week?”
On MSNBC the day before, anchor Alex Witt asked Gonzalez and another survivor, Sophie Whitney, “Where did you find the resolve after four days to set out to make this kind of a difference?”
Gonzalez called on people to support the gun control movement because, “they need to show that they are actively supporting us, because in reality, they’re actively supporting each other.”
Witt, rather than asking what that means, responded with an approving “Mmm.”
Seemingly out of nowhere, Gonzalez then said, “We need to protect everybody from the greed of the corporations in our society right now.”
What does corporate greed have to do with gun violence, Witt might have asked.
But, no, she simply concluded the segment with, “Best of luck girls, we’re all behind ya.”
Nobody learned anything from these interviews or the group therapy session disguised as a policy town hall that CNN hosted a week after the shooting.
The media aren’t doing these kids a favor by convincing them that they’re the heroes we’ve been waiting for. But if the press is going to keep promoting them, asking real questions would help the rest of us who have to watch.
