Semantics matter greatly. The general public hears mass shooting and thinks, random act of violence. They don’t hear “3am crack house was shot up by rival gang”.
It’s done purposefully, mostly just because scaring you into clicking by making you think “this could have been me” gets them more clicks and therefore more ad revenue and perpetuates the idea that active shooter incidents as most people perceive them are way more common than they are, which ups the fear and the clicks and ends up being a really fucked up manipulative cycle, basically the news is abusing us. Harder to scare you if they tell it in a less sensationalist manner, because you won’t connect to those people as deeply or in the same way unless you also happen to hang out in crack houses at 3am and most people do not do that.
There are some groups that perpetuate the same for political reasons as well, like Everytown, MDA, and the Brady campaign, but mostly it’s just plain ol’ “if it bleeds it leads give us attention/money.”
Semantics matter greatly. The general public hears mass shooting and thinks, random act of violence. They don’t hear “3am crack house was shot up by rival gang”.
It’s done purposefully, mostly just because scaring you into clicking by making you think “this could have been me” gets them more clicks and therefore more ad revenue and perpetuates the idea that active shooter incidents as most people perceive them are way more common than they are, which ups the fear and the clicks and ends up being a really fucked up manipulative cycle, basically the news is abusing us. Harder to scare you if they tell it in a less sensationalist manner, because you won’t connect to those people as deeply or in the same way unless you also happen to hang out in crack houses at 3am and most people do not do that.
There are some groups that perpetuate the same for political reasons as well, like Everytown, MDA, and the Brady campaign, but mostly it’s just plain ol’ “if it bleeds it leads give us attention/money.”