Media Convergence Initiative

This past week, a story came out about a 14-year-old student who murdered his math teacher at his high school after she asked him to stay after school for detention.  The boy allegedly followed her into the bathroom, killed her, and then hid her body in a trash can that he wheeled out into the woods.  This is obviously an incredibly tragic event.  The reaction among the public has mirrored the fact that this is an incredibly tragic event, as the story has brought about comments of “What is the world coming to?” and “What is wrong with people these days?” that all tragic events seem to bring.  Not only do I feel these comments tend to undermine the respect that should be given to the victim’s family, but I also think they come from a flawed point-of-view.

The answer to “what is wrong with people these days?” is likely, “the same thing that’s always been wrong with people”.  Crimes like these are committed for any number of reasons, from mental illness to extreme emotional outbursts.  The fact of the matter is, there’s no consistent trend indicating that these terrible crimes are happening any more often than they have in the past; in fact, there’s a number of statistics in many major cities that indicate violent crimes have been trending down over the past few decades.  The perception that there’s a flurry of such incidents comes entirely from the 24-hour news cycle, and the ever-increasing amount of technology in our lives.  Hearing about such tragic news events throughout the day and having them analyzed to the most minute detail leads to the idea that these crimes happen more often than they actually do.  There’s also the fact that negative news stories tend to “sell” much more than positive news stories for that very reason.  The negative news stories invoke a more extreme emotional reaction from the viewer than positive news stories do, and thus networks and news outlets are going to spend more time talking about such things.

That said, just because violent crimes trend down doesn’t mean society shouldn’t always be looking for more ways to curb such things happening.  There is value to be gleaned from discussion about what causes people to do these things.  The tragedy of what happened to the victim in this crime should just never be lost in such discussions as another one of the minute details of the story.

As plans and construction for the new World Trade Center progress, harsh criticisms are being made towards New York City’s efforts to replace the twin towers.

British street artist, Banksy wrote a blog last week criticizing the build that has been gaining some attention. “That building is a disaster,” he writes, “the attacks of September 11^th were an attack on all of us and we will live out our lives in their shadow… but it’s also how we react to adversity that defines us. And the response? 104 floors of compromise.”

Banksy first submitted this opinion column to the New York Times, only to be denied, but ironically gaining perhaps more attention by publishing it on his own website.

The new One World Trade Center is planned to stand at 1,776 feet tall making it “the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere,”

Banksy calls this new skyscraper a “betrayal of everyone who lost their lives on September 11^th because it so clearly proclaims the terrorists won. Those 10 men have condemned us to live in a world more mediocre than the one they attacked…”

Although I’m sure there are many with mixed emotions about this new tower being built, I am positive that there are many others who are on the very opposite of the spectrum—who believe that we should fight to rebuild the things that were stolen from us and that this new building is in fact a memorial of that ideal.

The 104-story One World Trade Center skyscraper is on schedule to be completed in May of next year.