NBC spin puts videogames to blame
It’s implied that the headline to a news story contains the most important information from that story, right? That’s not just a matter of opinion. That’s a generally recognized fact, isn’t it? So am I really seeing that NBC.com has used the headline, and not one, not two, but three opening paragraphs to discuss the fact that a 15-year-old boy accused of shooting and killing mother, father, and siblings liked violent videogames? Seriously?
Seriously.
If you read more deeply into the story, you’ll also find that the 15-year-old was also raised in a home with his jailhouse chaplain (and ex-convict) father, who not only trained his son to use a variety of guns at a young age, but also transformed their property into a “halfway house” for other convicted criminals. The boy was brought up with a relative armory in his home, among ex-cons who were in some “halfway” state of reforming from unspecified criminal mindsets, and it’s the videogames that NBC can’t stop talking about?
I’m no Ph.D, but I don’t think it takes a whole lot of book learning to guess what may have really contributed to this child’s comfort with gun violence, and his repressed anger at himself and the world around him. I’ll be highly surprised if we don’t eventually discover that this boy was abused by his family and/or some of those ex-cons. Sadly, if the mainstream media’s pattern of witch hunting continues, I’ll probably have to dig through paragraphs of crap about how much he enjoyed Pac-Man and movies about gladiators in order to find that information,
New Mexico teen accused of family slaughter loved ‘violent’ video games, police say [NBCnews.com]
