Me and the News
After watching part of the news with my wife last night, I’ve decided it brings out too much of the “Old Adam” in me and I will avoid watching the news if at all possible. What sets me off is emotionalism and lack of intellectual depth in both the coverage and the people being covered.
The lead story was about a man who was near death after police shot him in the course of pursuing him after he was part of a drug deal. The coverage showed an angry relative and witnesses decrying the police for firing too many shots at an unarmed man. Thomas Sowell covers these exact same arguments in an article entitled “Bullet Counters”. What Sowell argues is that the man was not “unarmed” he was, as the report glossed over, armed with a car that he was using to try to injure or kill the police officers. Sowell then talks about the notion of firing “too many shots.” The number of shots fired was studied in these types of incidents and it found that just over half the shots missed ever at 6 feet. When lives are at stake, the police don’t have the luxury to shoot single shots and then look around to see if it hit. I’m not for police brutality but I give the benefit of the doubt to the police. This story gives the benefit of the doubt to the emotional relative and sensationalism of police shooting an “unarmed” man.
Another story was on the budget cuts in the city of Alameda that might cause it to reduce the use of some of it’s fire vehicles. The reduction in emergency services is a real issue, but it has to reasonably addressed, I mean wouldn’t it be safest for everyone if there were police and fire stations on every block? But that’s not economically feasible so you decide on an appropriate level of service and set the funding level based on that, but that doesn’t work in the political world because you have unions and politicians with multiple agendas. What broke me on this story was the proposed solution of raising sales taxes to cover the shortfall. It never ceases to amaze me how little politicians understand economics. Thinking that raising local sales taxes will save them is nonsense. Just imagine they raise the sales tax in Alameda by 1- 2% wouldn’t residents just stop off in Oakland on the way home from work to do their shopping thus lowering the city’s revenue.
Those are some of my beefs with the news. I know the news casts aren’t changing anytime soon, so I’ll just avoid them.
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