Just got home from work and opened up my MacBook and see the awful tragic story of a murdered golfer from ISU. She was the Big12 champ. She was young, she was white, she was pretty, she was a college athlete. This is an awful tragedy that deserves full attention.
But if it does deserve full attention, why doesn't it when the victim is none of the above? Is the senseless killing of so many others, even on a daily basis, less newsworthy?
What is interesting to me is I find this story on Yahoo's front page. It's been my front page since I started surfing these WWW waters 15 years ago. Yahoo is very good at highlighting injustices or perceived injustices, and other stories that favor liberal causes. I get annoyed by some of their headlines to be honest but applaud them when they expose racists/bigots/ whatever phobes there might be. But then they become racist by publicizing this story over many others that are equally tragic, but don't check all the boxes for what makes them newsworthy.
Mollie Tibbetts is a name many know. Wasn't a college athlete but checked the other boxes that the ISU golfer checked. I saw a shared post on FB that had pictures of 4 other persons who were missing at the same time, but didn't check those boxes, particularly the race box, therefore their story doesn't make headlines.
Sometimes all it takes is being a college athlete that makes someones death headline worthy. It bugs me too when I read that a player on the U of Whoever died in a car accident. Why is it important that we know about that? If the person is a well known player, I understand, but these headlines I see most often are not.
Another realm that I observe this is demonstrated in the headline "Beloved Chimpanzee dies at zoo" Anyone else bugged by headlines like that? I am. "3 Whales Beached and Near Death" might read another headline. I believe that people are placed as stewards of our creation. We care for the animals and environment, so I'm not an anti-animal person or whatever, but people matter more. More than any whale, chimp or puppy.
It's a sad commentary I believe on our society. Go to the middle of the local news section of a major city newspaper and you'll see a small story of someone who doesn't matter being murdered. They don't matter because they're poor, they're either hispanic or African American, they're gangbangers, they were drug dealers even. I understand we might say sometimes those victims shouldn't have been doing what they were doing. I've said the same thing, but their lives still matter. In many ways their deaths are even sadder as they lived lives without happiness, or peace, or security, or parents, or siblings, or without basic necessities sometimes.
Am I saying we shouldn't mourn what happened today? Absolutely not. But we need to pay more attention to the deaths that don't check all of the boxes.
