The scripts that the news media uses to write its stories are so powerful that the absence of a script can cause a story to go completely unreported, even if it is quite important. The creation of a new script can then cause a story to take off like wildfire.
One such script is the "crisis cluster" script. It aggregates together multiple things of a disturbing nature and then queries why they are happening, asking if the cluster amounts to a crisis of some kind.
That’s what happened with the priest scandal in 2002. Prior cases of priest abusers had percolated through the press sufficiently that eventually reporters connected the dots and wrote an unwritten script into which the facts of new cases could be poured. Then they noticed a cluster of these cases and poured those into the "crisis cluster" script, whereupon they hyped the story to enormous proportions.
Now: The story was real. Dioceses had been grossly delinquent in their handling of such cases. But if you remember the madness of those days, every priest every priest was being looked at as a potential pedophile. There were reports of mothers were shielding their children from priests as they walked down the street, as if they were about to pounce on their children in public. That was simply disproportionate. Nor did the media get all of its facts right in reporting the story. (The homosexuality aspect was notably underplayed, as was the fact that it was ephebophilia, not pedophilia, that was the larger issue.)
It’s interesting to see what gets the "crisis cluster" treatment and what doesn’t. Some things that have include:
- School shootings
- Workplace shootings
- Shootings by postal employees
Some things that haven’t yet but one day might be given such treatment include:
- School teachers who have sex with students
- Protestant ministers who have sex with minors
- Priests who have had sex with parishioners
Incidentally, note the two themes running through these crisis clusters: sex and death.
Here’s another things that hasn’t received crisis cluster treatment:
MOTHERS WHO MURDER THEIR CHILDREN.
As the author of the piece notes, a notible cluster of mothers murdering their children occurred last month, but the MSM didn’t put the pieces together and do a crisis cluster story. He concludes:
As we can see, the phenomena of clusters is in many ways an artificial
one created and perpetuated by the news media. The facts are right
there. Are we truly in the midst of an epidemic of hideous abuse by
murderous mothers? Or is this just an unusually bloody snapshot of
randomly-distributed killings? Or is this pattern actually a sign that
mothers abuse and kill their children more often than most people
realize? You’ll have to decide for yourself; the news media won’t tell
you.
This serie about The scripts that the news media uses to write its stories (TSTTNMUTWIS, or something) is not only interesting but also useful, specially for many people who, like me, has to take contact with the MSM irregularly (once a year or so).
You should write a book about it.
“But if you remember the madness of those days, every priest every priest was being looked at as a potential pedophile.”
Hmm, I don’t really remember that. I remember most Bishops being regarded as a belly-crawling, boot-licking, a**-covering cowards who were more than willing to sacrifice someone else’s kids in order to maintain their own positions (Frey, Law, Egan, Mahoney, Weakland, Grahmann, etc.). This, of course, later turned out to be overstated by oh, goodness, at least two thirds.
The scripts that the news media uses to write its stories are so powerful…
LOL. My first take on this was that the media was using some AI computer scripts to auto generate their stories. I really must get out more…
Another unreported crisis cluster: men murdering their girlfriends who won’t have an abortion.
My guess is that most of these children were in single parent homes or homes with a live-in boyfriend. As the father of five, I can tell you that tending to one or more screaming children (like when they’re ALL sick) is very stressful and having a committed spouse makes ALL the difference. Sometimes just 5 minutes of quiet (being able to step outside) might have made a difference in some of these mother’s lives.
“My first take on this was that the media was using some AI computer scripts to auto generate their stories.”
What makes you so sure that they aren’t?
+J.M.J+
Another recent crisis cluster: pregnant women getting killed, cut open and their babies removed alive. After that horrible case late last year with the eight-month pregnant woman, some reporters cited previous similar incidents and started asking whether it was a “trend”.
Exactly what I didn’t want to hear, being eight months pregnant at the time myself! But it was all just talk; there was no “trend”. Sometimes those reporters can really scare us over absolutely nothing.
In Jesu et Maria,
Maybe someone should provide a script for news stories/consipracy theories about the Catholic Church that later turn out to be completely without merit. The mainstream media outlets all seem to be missing those stories.