Killing Rampage, Murder-Suicide, Love Triangle, Children killed...all the elements of a major story

[HipChick]

Media bias because the perp is female?

http://www.news-record.com/blog/56184/entry/132614


I've been trying to figure out why Sunday's tragic murder-suicide hasn't gone national. It is the most dramatic and violent tale of death and mayhem since the Klenner-Lynch murders. It has all the elements -- sexual affairs, temporary restraining orders, threatened alienation of affection lawsuit, apparent payoffs. And of course, murder. Five people dead so far. Four of them children. A sixth on life support.

But best I can tell via Google, virtually every media outlet outside of the area is using the Associated Press dispatches.

Possible reasons:

* It is effectively a vacation week for most news media so there is difficulty dispatching reporters.
* It is viewed as a domestic quarrel gone horribly bad, but with little universal interest.
* It isn't a whodunit; unlike the stereotypical missing child story.

I can understand why the big papers aren't doing much with it. They're cash-strapped and, presumably, focused more on local issues than some random crime in North Carolina. But it seems tailor-made for television, both the tabloid kind and morning news shows, given the sorts of lurid, sensational programming they often do. On the other hand, without video or family members talking to the media, I suppose it's problematic for TV.

I find that fortunate. I don't wish that kind of national coverage on the families involved or our community.


Full Story: http://www.news-record.com/content/2011/11/25/article/final_teenage_victim_dies

http://www.news-record.com/content/2011/11/22/article/killer_gave_ex_lover_10000_check

[Capitalocracy]

1. The vast majority of reporting is reprinting from the AP and Reuters wire.

So there are all the reasons you mentioned above, but even the big stories at least start out as just rehashing of AP and Reuters stories that come down the wire. Actual reporters are extremely rare these days.

[HipChick]

2. True..

Those are the words of the editor, given at the link

[Ilsa]

3. Good god. What a horrible story.

Mindless murders. It's appalling. I guess she did it in a way that no one could see it coming. Her own children, too.

[apocalypsehow]

4. Another "law abiding gun owner," no doubt - right up until the moment she wasn't.

Tragic.

[friendly_iconoclast]

5. Your first response to a tragedy like this is to push an agenda? Classy...

[October]

6. OMG, awful! But I think the media has covered plenty of stories on female murderers...

The recent Florida case, the Knox case in England -- the woman who drowned her children...