Washington Post leaders thought they were doing right by showing the carnage those weapons of war create. But we already knew that.

Judging from Post editor Sally Buzbee’s introduction to the project, as well as from my own reporting, the paper talked to dozens of survivors and family members and weighed the enormous range of their opinions about this issue to craft the feature. It was so much better than I was expecting that it initially blinded me to the way it was bad. But bad in a kind of routine way: The media, as well as certain kinds of activists, believe we need to be presented with graphic, grisly evidence to grasp what are simply facts. This grisly evidence, they posit, will change hearts and minds.

It will not. Upwards of three-quarters of American voters support almost every commonsense gun law. And we know why political leaders haven’t heeded their call: the gun lobby, and its disgusting political servants. But the Post tried, anyway, with its multimedia “Terror on Repeat” project. I won’t impugn these journalists’ motives. I’ll assume they are good. I’ll just tell you what I saw, and why I would like to spare people seeing the same thing. Especially survivors.

  • PeepinGoodArgsEnglish
    4·
    7 months ago

    Close, but not quite.

    This is basically the part that I focused on

    Nelba, a therapist and grief activist of astonishing wisdom and integrity who is now teaching at the Yale School of Public Health, schooled many people in why no one has the right to demand that she or any other parent share the post-murder photos of their children. She did so in a New York Times op-ed and in an interview with me last year, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook horror.

    Here’s what she told me then (and why I feel so strongly about ignorant, mainly white, people who use one particular example against these families): “I didn’t appreciate the weaponizing of one tragedy against another. They weaponized the sacred story of Emmett Till and his mom against me, and that was a shitty thing to do. And I offer all the respect to that family. But [his mother] had a choice. It was not forced. She was not pushed.”

    Admittedly, my summarization of Nelba’s argument here is abstracted and removes the affront of weaponization. That might be why it sounds like I don’t really believe what I’m saying. But I do insofar as I’m examining a portion of Nelba’s argument.

    The real thesis of the article, though, was that the project was basically weaponizing gory photos of children to absolutely no avail; it woiuld be all suffering, no relief. I don’t think the author isn’t saying not to discuss gun control…just that this particular avenue was never going to be effective.

    I suppose we’ll see…

    • spaceghoti@lemmy.oneOPEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      The real thesis of the article, though, was that the project was basically weaponizing gory photos of children to absolutely no avail; it woiuld be all suffering, no relief. I don’t think the author isn’t saying not to discuss gun control…just that this particular avenue was never going to be effective.

      I agree, that’s my takeaway from the article as well.