27 January 2009

Blissfully Ignorant

Don't worry, fellow news reader; the Associated Press will sanitize it for you:

Supposedly no one has any clue who the perpetrators or the victims were, except that the AP hints the shooting might have been gang-related and tells us that "many of those at the house did not speak English." Did they speak any other language? The AP doesn't say.

(T)he story, as vaguely described as it was by the AP and the Eagle, reminded us of a scene from "Gran Torino," the new Clint Eastwood movie, which involves a Laotian gang in an inner suburb of Detroit. It says something about the state of journalism in Wichita that people who see Hollywood movies are better informed than people who read the local paper.

If you think the problem is Laotians, you're too smart by half; the problem is being too afraid to get into what's really behind the headlines, especially bad here because that's what news organizations are supposed to do.

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