Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watmath.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!credmond
From: credmond@watmath.UUCP (Chris Redmond)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: Re: Challenger and the Media
Message-ID: <1107@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 20:58:38 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.1107
Posted: Tue Feb  4 20:58:38 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 5-Feb-86 02:54:58 EST
References: <152800003@uiucuxc> <3698@pur-ee.UUCP>
Reply-To: credmond@watmath.UUCP (Chris Redmond)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 23

In article <3698@pur-ee.UUCP> mdm@pur-ee.UUCP (Mike D McEvoy) writes:
>MEDIA struck and the next thing I knew there was a camera in my face and a 
>very insensitive reporter was asking " and how do YOU feel about the....?".
>
>I will never understand the mind of some reporters.  How a human being can 
>be that insensitive  to walk into a town and start asking "and how do 
>you feel..?" I will never know.  I guess it takes a special type of sub-
>human.  I don't feel bad for myself.  My grief over the loss did not
>prevent me from expressing my opinion effectively to both reporters. I 

I think this criticism is a trifle unreasonable.  The Challenger disaster
has been generally recognized as a national, if not international, event
of major proportions -- one of those once-a-decade occurrences that have
all Americans weeping together (or cheering, should the astonishing event
be a happy one, such as the release of the Iranian hostages).  Such
unanimity of feeling and thought happens chiefly because of the media,
television in particular, which repeat and amplify and repeat and explore
and repeat the appropriate emotion.  When the event is the unexpected death
of a group of heroes, that media repetition takes the form of the sounds
and pictures of a nation crying.  

  Chris