Posted on 10/18/2002 5:29:17 AM PDT by KLT
It’s official. The Washington-area sniper story is now a full-fledged circus.
All the ingredients are in place:
1—A phony witness leads police and media on a wild goose chase, telling a tall tale of a cream colored van with a non-functioning taillight, driven by an olive-skinned man and carrying a shooter with an AK-74 – none of which existed.
2—Fox News sends its top hack, Mr. Showbiz himself, Geraldo Rivera, to do a standup at the Fredricksburg, Virginia, shooting. Afterwards, Geraldo retires to do what he does best, autograph butts at the local Hooters, then jets off to Bali where the body count is higher.
3—The various media outlets give the shooter names: The Single-Shot Sniper (redundancy, redundancy), the Beltway Sniper, etc.
4—All the networks develop splashy graphics to headline their stories.
5—Routine press conferences become “breaking news.”
6—Instant experts appear like locusts on the wind, citing their expertise as “former counterterrorism experts” and offering varying theories on local, network and cable news shows. An FBI source of ours says half these experts were forced to retire because they weren’t that good at their jobs.
7—Gun control freaks come out of the woodwork, citing the shootings as justification for taking all the guns in America and melting them into a giant memorial to Michael Moore.
8—Newspaper columnists, running out of ideas, call up Washington-based journalists and ask them if they are afraid to pump their own gas.
9—Politicians issue reams of press releases and introduce new bills to curtail sale of firearms and ballistic fingerprinting of those already in existence.
10—When the media runs shot of facts, they find some fruitcake to claim it’s all a big al Qaeda plot.
All this hoopla only cheapens the sad facts of this case: a madman with a rifle systematically and cold-bloodedly kills nine people and wounds two other over a two-week period.
Cops can’t do their job because they must take time out of their investigation to deal with the ever growing rat pack of reporters who dog every move, demand every detail of a sensitive investigation.
The defense department decides to deploy sophisticated recon planes to help in the hunt, but NBC news tells us the planes won’t be here for several days, telling the sniper he still have a window of opportunity to increase his body count.
At each shooting, camera crews rush to interview witnesses before police get a chance to talk to them, contaminating a crime scene that already yields too few clues.
It’s time to back off and let the cops do their job. It’s time to stop glorifying this nutcase and feeding his ego by claiming he is part of some vast foreign plot to destroy the United States.
Change the channel. This is murder. It ain’t entertainment.
© Copyright 2002 by Capitol Hill Blue
The whole affair is now officially a circus,
Gun control freaks are in a feeding frenzy,
And the factless media should really back off a bit.
He still doesn't grasp the fact that it doesn't make one a fruitcake to observe the obvious...that it's not some nutcase.
The media has turned this into a circus!
It makes it impossible to catch anonymous people when you have the road blocks and all developments right and wrong on TV...
Can't wait to meet ya next Saturday MUD....What a Great Time We're gonna have....Don't forget the after Rally Party....
That's about the way it's going...
I disagree with its the job of the police.Now its their job but they dont have the power to start rounding up people and kicking them out of the country. I see the point he is trying to make that the media is a circus and they need to help the police not hinder them. But it is the p&p's that have allowed this to get this far. Since 9/11 the p&p's should have put forth more effort into rounding up people who are in this country illegaly. I also believe the gov.org hampers the police more then the media.
To me, the silliest hire Fox has made to date, including even Greta...MUD
Must agree with some other posters however - cannot see this being a one man show, I'm betting on at least three (driver, spotter, shooter).
Unless there's a good sports contest on the tube, I try to FReep from 10-11 each evening, so I reckon I'll never really know if Greta's changed her stripes or not. Brent Bozell's Media Research Center will give me the low-down after-the-fact in any event.
FReegards...MUD
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