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by catacombs 2459 days ago
> On August 3, 46 people were shot in El Paso, Texas. > That same weekend, 51 people were shot in Chicago, Illinois.

One is not like the other.

The El Paso shooting was the result of one person, armed with semi-assault weapon, going into a Walmart and killing more than 20 people within a couple minutes.

The Chicago shootings resulted in seven deaths but were spread out among multiple cases and days.

Both are tragic obviously.

But the El Paso got wall-to-wall coverage because, in essence, it was a domestic terrorist attack.

1 comments

> semi-assault

?

> The Chicago shootings resulted in seven deaths but were spread out among multiple cases and days.

Naturally, smaller events have less coverage. But even totaling up the coverages for each Chicago event in less coverage than El Paso.

Most new outlets bias their reporting disproportionately. IDK what the relationship is. Cubic, probably. An event that is 2 as big gets 8 times the coverage. Three times as big gets 27 times the coverage.

---

In any case, media frequently shows an unrepresentative perspective on reality. It is very easy -- indeed expected -- to change report reality based on the opinion of what should and should not be reported.

> ?

The El Paso shooter used a semi-automatic rifle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASR-series_rifles

> Naturally, smaller events have less coverage. But even totaling up the coverages for each Chicago event in less coverage than El Paso.

Huh? The El Paso shooting was a big deal. Hence, the wall-to-wall coverage.

> Most new outlets bias their reporting disproportionately. IDK what the relationship is. Cubic, probably. An event that is 2 as big gets 8 times the coverage. Three times as big gets 27 times the coverage.

You don't seem to understand how reporting works. Journalists reporting on breaking news situations do not inject their opinions into the situation. They report what happened in a digestible and comprehensive way. Go and read the first coverage of the El Paso shooting and let me know if you see any opinions injected into the pieces.

> In any case, media frequently shows an unrepresentative perspective on reality. It is very easy -- indeed expected -- to change report reality based on the opinion of what should and should not be reported.

Again. You don't seem to understand how reporting works. I'd love for you to message the Texas reporters who covered the El Paso shooting your statement above and see how they'd response to your accusation that they, as well as other people who on the ground when shit hits the fans, shape their coverage based on opinion.