Radio Free Montone: A Tweet Got Me Thinking
By John Montone, 1010 WINS
A tweet has me thinking.
One recent morning reporting on 1010 WINS lead story I called the latest slashing, "Yet another cut and run," and referring to an earlier attack I related how the victim told us, "I thought I was going to die," emphasizing that it was a struggle for him to talk because, "…he had been slashed cheek to chin…" and he needed, "…137-stiches on his face and inside his mouth to close the wound."
To which a Twitter follower wrote, "Perhaps less attention paid to slashers will mean less slashing."
My immediate thought was to tweet back, "Sure, we won't report bad news anymore." I did not.
Well, over the weekend that followed four more people were attacked. Three in the Bronx where a young man was stabbed in the gut. Another man had his face sliced and a man tried to cut a young lady's ear off.
The NYPD says there have been 530 knife attacks this year, a 20% increase over the same period in 2015.
So are violent, mentally unstable people following the news coverage and spurred into action by it? I don't think so, but I can't swear it isn't happening. What I think may be happening is that reporters are going over the police blotters with a magnifying glass. And whenever they spot an attack committed with some sort of blade…knife, razor or box cutter…no matter how minor, it gets published and broadcast. Where as a year ago it might have been ignored.
So yes, assaults committed with blades are 20% higher so far this year. But I believe that there is a good chance that over the next several months there may be far fewer knife attacks. And as that happens reporters will pay less attention to such crimes when they pop up on the police blotter. The media's attention span…never very long…will move onto another "spree" or "epidemic." Hopefully, not a deadly one.
For now though, slashings are news. And even if some seething madman after reading, hearing or watching a report on such an attack packs his blade and cuts a victim's face while screaming, "Put me on TV," we can't stop reporting about it.
It's what we do.
