For the threat of violence to be newsworthy, shouldn't it be more deadly than your chances of getting struck by lightning?
An America is killed by lightning on average once a week. According to the National Weather Service, lightning kills an average of 49 people each year in the United States and injures hundreds more. In a nation of more than 330 million people, this is a very small number, a statistical rarity. Therefore I propose the “Lightning Strike Rule of Journalism” — in order for any dangerous social trend to be considered newsworthy, it must pose a greater risk to the public than being killed by lightning.
The inspiration for this rule was supplied last week by Ben Makuch, a reporter for Vice who has recently specialized in reporting on white supremacist extremism, with headline after headline warning about the neo-Nazi menace: “Neo-Nazi Terrorists Planned Fortified Compound in Michigan” (February 23), “Accused Neo-Nazi Terrorist’s Account Posted Threatening Videos of Him Armed in Public” (March 3), “Former Neo-Nazi Terror Leader Gets Three-Year Prison Term” (May 4), et cetera. Makuch had been plowing this journalistic furrow for months when he published an article Thursday with the blunt headline: “Why Are So Many Marines Neo-Nazis?”
By an unfortunate coincidence, Makuch’s article was published the same day that terrorists in Kabul killed 12 Marines in a suicide bomb attack. The online reaction was furious and, in some cases, obscene (my distant cousin Meghan McCain, for example). Such was the intensity of the backlash that Vice deleted their tweet promoting Makuch’s article. But deleting a tweet won’t correct the fundamental problem with Makuch’s reporting, namely that the phenomenon he has been covering so diligently in recent months is such a statistical rarity as to violate the Lightning Strike Rule.
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