Stereotypes in media's murder coverage

Lambiase's article on the the girls that were murdered in Ft. Worth (Goodlove and her friend) was very interesting and brought up good points that made me think.

One thing in general is the issue of stereotyping in this kind of media coverage. Many newspaper reporters say that in a way, stereotypind helps people get a better idea of the people involved, without knowing them fully. It seems though, that in cases that involve a death, stereotyping is just not a good idea at all. Because of their death, reporters can't even come close to understanding what the victim was like. All they know is hearsay from people that (of course) are only going to shed good light. As was seen in this case, the stereotyping they did was dangerous. The image the reporters gave of these girls was extremely good in the beginning, so when ideas were thrown out that made the girls look not so perfect(suggestions of lesbian rivalry and drug use, for example), it is a little confusing to the reader and the whole situation in general. Not only that, but in the end their assumptions of 'lesbian rivalry' and drug use ended up not being true.

The second question is: how much of this should even be covered? It seems there should be a line of what is shared and what is not. News that can protect people seems necessary. As insensitive as it sounds, stories like this are just entertainment to people. No one benefits from all the run-around of trying to figure out what realy happened.

All this to say, this article changed my outlook on reading articles like this. I don't want to become insensitive or numb, but it definitely is hard to discern truth from "white lies". I just don't want to form assumptions in my head based on what the reporter is telling me about a victim or their suspects.

This week a girl at UNT was murdered. This is terrible. I was reading the article in the NT Daily and am just confused on what to take in as truth,and in general don't want the stereotypes evident in the story to form my opinions on what happened. The thing is we probably shouldn't have opinions anyway, so why does it seem like reporters try to get us to think certain ways about things?

News if frustrating when it blurs the line between news and story-telling or entertainment.