Murder and the Media

Is there an international sliding scale that determines the value of a life? When I watch tv/read the newspaper/listen to the radio, I become more and more convinced that there is. As upset as I get when I read news reports about horrible, senseless, violent acts happening on a daily basis, I'm almost more upset about the people's who tragedies go unnoticed (or barely noticed) as a single unheralded news item. Now, clearly American media is going to place more attention on things that happen to Americans, but the disparities in coverage are amazing to me.

Honestly, I didn't put much thought into these things until today, when I was looking at New York Times web page and thought about just how many violent killings there are every day, and how I don't really pay any attention until those killings take place in middle class America. I had to scroll down the page to read the headline "Bombs Rip Through Baghdad, Killing 171". 171 people killed in a single bomb blast. These people are just as much vicitms of being in the wrong place at the wrong time as any one else. Granted, Iraq is in the middle of a bloody war - but should civilian deaths in a time of war seem any less tragic than civilian deaths unrelated to war? 171 people killed in one day - a day that is just one in a string of deadly days. I'm ashamed of myself for not instantly wanting to know who these people were the same way I wanted to know who the victims at Virgina Tech had been. Shouldn't an Iraqi life mean as much to me as an American life? It's amazing how I'm able to compartmentalize horrible death, so that I only have to deal with the real consequences of human violence every once in a while.

It's overwhelming to think about the vast amount of violent death surrounding us every day.
- 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by an intimate partner in 2000.
- There are over 12,000 murders a year in the US (.043 per 1,000 people), and 8,000 of which are murders with firearms.
- There are over 26,000 murders a year in Columbia (.62 per 1,000 people) and 21,898 of which were murder with firearms.
- On average, there are .1 murders per year per 1,000 people worldwide.
And those are just murder statistics. The worst part is that I don't have any idea how to stop it. I also don't want to see more sad stories on the news, and I don't necessarily want to have to think about it. Every time something happens like the horrible killings at Virginia Tech, we tell ourselves that we'll never forget. We tell ourselves that we won't let it happen again. Then, we change the channel, ignore the reports of the 60 people murdered in Russia, and do nothing until something awful happens close to home again.