After the stabbing death of a woman at the hands of her boyfriend in a Po’ipu
restaurant a few weeks ago, a reader wrote a scathing letter to The Garden
Island, criticizing what she called – paraphrasing now – our heartless,
big-city approach to reporting the murder. She felt we hadn’t taken the
community’s sentiments into consideration or used the victim’s tragic end as a
lesson of the horrors of domestic violence.
The reader couldn’t have known
as she wrote her letter that we were already planning a followup story about
the larger issue of domestic violence. Or that the first story that upset her
was done on deadline, with only enough time to get the basic facts about the
homicide before the newspaper had to be printed. Or that Kaua’i County
officials would arrange a press conference for the California visitors who
tried to save the stabbing victim, and that we would use their story to amplify
the terror that innocent bystanders feel when confronted by the most violent of
all acts.
But the reader was representative of many people who believe the
news media uses murders, and the accompanying emotions of the victims’
survivors, to simply sell newspapers or grab viewers.
In some cases, such
criticism is entirely accurate. Not to sound self-serving or to ignore
newspapers’ slips into prurient coverage, but television particularly milks
murder for every drop of pathos and drama. When they happen, murders are
routinely the lead story on TV news broadcasts. Even if there are stories much
more important to the daily lives of the general population, murders rule the
story pyramid.
Is that the fault of media consumers or the media? It’s a
fair question. TV viewers apparently pay closer attention to gore, and
newspaper sales from racks spike when there’s a prominent headline about a
murderous rampage. Do people find such news irresistible, or are they trained
by the media to pay attention to gruesome news?
The Garden Island doesn’t
see dollar signs in murders. With six of them on Kaua’i last year, we’ve had
some recent practice at covering homicides, and to each we’ve tried to bring a
mixture of compassion and the public’s need to know.
The latter comes in
all different sizes and shapes, depending on the case. With the apparent serial
killings in the West Side area, the public needs to know if the killer is
likely to strike again, and how he might be stopped. In the case of the woman
stabbed by her boyfriend, who then committed suicide, the public needed to be
reminded, once again, that domestic violence can and does reach horrific
conclusions, and that situations contributing to that potential require
vigilance and responsiveness by average citizens and police.
Murder is
news, but it isn’t our opportunity to grind away at the tragic fates of others.
We’d feel that way even if Kaua’i was a metropolis instead of a small
island.
TGI editor Pat Jenkins can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 227)
and [pjenkins@pulitzer.net]
