When the Headline Isn't the Story

Wow: yesterday's headline screamed about a shoot out at the local high school, resulting in one fatality, as well as three other gunshot victims. Scary, huh? Lock the doors and bar the windows as the shooters are gunning down victims at the local high school parking lot. The article, however, tells a different story, but who ever reads the rest of the story? If I get the big picture from the headlines, why would I want to waste time reading what really happened? Using the headline as the story, the on-line bloggers have had a field day, including the sage who commented that my little town has 50 years of violent history and there is no changing that.

The blogger is right: there is no changing history, but what about changing the present and the future direction? Perhaps the bloggers could begin by reading the story, not just reacting to the headline, and then posting rantings and ravings that are based in truth, rather than in supposition and hyperbole. If the goal of the bloggers is to become the story, they are achieving that goal in droves at the expense of the facts.

Here's what happened: four people involved in the drug trade, two of whom were from out of town and two of whom were from out of state, met a fifth person in a remote area of the city near the high school parking lot at the farthest boundary of the school at 1:45 AM, the middle of the night for most of us. The fifth person, who lives in the neighborhood adjacent to the high school parking lot, fired on the four while they were still in the car, which then crashed into a tree. One was killed in the car, two others were hit by gun fire, and the fourth occupant apparently escaped unharmed. The shooter was tracked to his nearby home, where he was arrested and the weapon recovered. In the home was evidence of an active pot farm and drug lab; hence, law enforcement believes this was a drug deal gone bad.

The headline isn't the story, nor is it always an accurate capture of the event. This was not a shoot-out at the local high school parking lot; it was not school-related; it did not occur during the day; and the headline deliberately misrepresents the actual events. This kind of attention-grabbing headline doesn't just paint the city in a negative light, but it also causes alarm from all those readers who scan the headlines and believe that the headline is the story. Parents panic and thank God that their children are safe at home while all this violence goes on at the school parking lot. The headline about two men shot to death who were found in a Thermal vineyard the same night was buried on the back pages, but "our" story made the front page based on the potential for ramping up sales of the paper, as well as assuring coverage on the TV news by reporters who echo the newspaper headline to get viewers to stay tuned for more details about this "shoot out at the high school parking lot."

The obvious effort to paint my town as "the wild west" in its on-going lawlessness eradicates all of the positive actions the people who live here take to change the public's perception of the area. Local people are scared by the sensational headlines and the partial news reports they get via the media, while people who live in other communities feel safer behind their gates. There is no more crime in my community than there is in any other desert community: we just get the front page headlines!

It's time for the journalists to investigate the facts and report the truth in a fair and balanced venue that is not tainted with sensational and misleading headlines or bloggers who paint a different picture than the story warrants. It may be beneficial for the rest of the citizens of the Valley to think that all the criminals live in my town, but that kind of thinking leads to complacency and risktaking behaviors that invite the criminals into their communities.