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A gunman fired upon thousands of people attending a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Sunday night, in a brutal attack that is blamed for at least 58 deaths, police say. In the mass shooting and panic that ensued, 515 people were injured. At least one of the dead is an off-duty police officer who was attending the concert.
Editorializing: Interesting how media always emphasize ISLAMIC terrorists, but downplay domestic terrorism as psychologically disturbed individual lone-wolfs.
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Over 50 dead in mass shooting in Las Vegas
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"History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions."
-- Ted Koppel
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @06:53PM (5 children)
Being "over the lake", it is interesting to see differences in reports from American outlets vs. European ones. Namely the one which stuck out the most to me, is that the American outlets not only mention the death toll, but also explicitly point out number of injured cops, and even details such as 2(?) of the fatalities being off-duty cops. This detail isn't mentioned in many European sources I read.
Why the emphasis on cops? Are cops, and off-duty ones at that, somehow more special in the eyes of Americans, or more likely the American media perhaps? To me, this helps fuel the us-vs-them attitude that we non-Americans see of cop-vs-public brewing in America. Reporting the injuries of on-duty cops I can perhaps understand, it shows they are doing a dangerous job and getting injured in the line of duty, and gives a sense of how the events unfolded. But off-duty fatalities? Those people were not any different from the rest of the public enjoying the event. Details of off-duty cops vs regular masses aren't important, they're all people at the end of the day. Why not report statistics of fatalities from people working in other sectors and professions, for example military, doctors, nurses, teachers? They are just as deserving a mention.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Grishnakh on Monday October 02 2017, @07:08PM
Why the emphasis on cops? Are cops, and off-duty ones at that, somehow more special in the eyes of Americans, or more likely the American media perhaps?
Yes, conservative Americans absolutely believe that cops are more special than everyone else.
To me, this helps fuel the us-vs-them attitude that we non-Americans see of cop-vs-public brewing in America.
Yep.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 02 2017, @07:10PM (1 child)
Cops are a protected class of U.S. citizen with the ability to kill and have a reasonable expectation of getting away with it. They should certainly be considered heroes in a situation like this, even if they didn't do much of anything.
About 100 cops [odmp.org] have been killed in 2017, with around 700 killed by cops [washingtonpost.com]. So we can conclude that the life of a cop is seven times, or perhaps fourteen or seventy times more valuable than an ordinary citizen.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @09:32PM
Or we could conclude that cops are 1/7000 as likely to need shooting as your average citizen. See, misused numbers can mean anything you want them to. Except not really.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @07:18PM
Its a mix, ratings are definitely part of it but probably more like an excuse that producers tell themselves when they push such stories out. Keeping US citizens divided is the key part, along with keeping law enforcement in the us/them mindset. It is much easier to get LEOs to do what you want when they have anger directed at every nameless citizen.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:52PM
In the eyes of the government, certainly. Some states have even passed laws such that assaulting an off-duty cop is a felony while assaulting a regular citizen is merely a misdemeanor.
http://kfor.com/2015/04/22/bill-signed-into-law-will-increase-penalties-for-assaulting-off-duty-officer/ [kfor.com]
Yup. As if things like the "Police Officers' Bill of Rights" that nearly every state has enacted -- which gives police officers special rights if they are accused of any crime -- didn't do that already...