I wrote this post last night to post for today. I had second thoughts on posting it so I asked my husband to read it. I, for reasons mentioned below, stay away from the news, but he mentioned a story that was in the news today and now I feel that, after a slight revamp, this subject has more relevance today and must be shared.
I was replying to one of my comments on yesterday’s blog posts and had this thought. I wanted to share it briefly to get your opinion.
Yesterday’s post was about a picture my son’s girlfriend took of a young man who was crowd surfing at a concert they went to last week. He was in a wheelchair! The band pointed to the young man and said, “Get him up here on stage!” So the crowd picked him up in the wheelchair and sent him above their heads safely to a spot on the stage with the band. The young man was in heaven. One of the points I made in my post was how this crowd just came together and did it. They used strength some of them probably didn’t even know they had.
After reading the story completely, one of my readers, Ramona made a comment about how inspiring it is to see people come together to do something good for someone. Her comment lead to this response, “There is so much good in the world. I think the media would do well to notice that even though the old slogan of, “What bleeds, leads” worked for years for ratings, maybe if they started focusing more on the kindness in the world and the heroes and stopped giving criminals such power through media play that perhaps there would be a shift. At least there would be a shift in perception of more good going on and people would start duplicating it.”
I loved how locally, in the Boston area, the media didn’t really give the Boston Marathon Bombers much credit by name, only when necessary. We really didn’t care who they were or what their names were, nor did we care to remember them. We just cared about the justice. They stuck with “Suspect #1 and Suspect #2” as their names most often. I remember at one point, we were calling the first suspect, “Speed Bump” because his brother had run him over when trying to evade the police. Some of you may argue that it was uncalled for or cruel. What they did to innocent people put us in a position to not care at all about these two. I do think reporting on something like the bombings was necessary and very instrumental in catching the people responsible but on the other hand, it dominated our TV’s. There were reports of the heroes and their back stories, but it took up very little time. It got to the point that the negative side of the story was all anyone was talking about for a week on end. It was depressing and mind-altering. I had to turn the TV and computer off, shut my phone down and escape it all for my own sanity. Every show in the Boston area was preempted for the same story and it was so overplayed that the reporters were running out of things to say and the same footage was shown over and over.
So, what if we were to go in the opposite direction and spend more time on the good things that are going on in our area or our country? Stop repeating negative stories, introduce more heroes and stop making criminals famous. What if doing so would create a higher vibration and positivity in those who watched, resulting in greater happiness, less stress and greater overall peace? Just what if?
The above was written last night. Today the Boston Herald reported on a story stating that Boston’s Mayor, Tom Menino sent a letter protesting the picture of the bomber being on the August 1st cover of Rolling Stone’s Magazine. He stated that he felt that “it rewards a terrorist with star treatment,” and that the survivors more deserve cover stories.
The article in the Herald stated that, “Stop & Shop, CVS Pharmacy, Tedeschi Food Shops and Cumberland Farms are boycotting the Rolling Stone Magazine over next month’s cover.”
PLEASE!! I really want your feedback on this. If you want to make a statement, stop watching the news and buying magazines and newspapers that promote the sales of their media by making the criminals and terrorists famous. Start aligning yourself with more positive news and more positive people.
This movement has already started. We just need more people to join in. Let’s send a message to the media that the statement, “What bleeds, leads,” is no longer necessity in order to obtain high sales. Are you with me?
(Click through more articles on the right hand side of this page for more positive posts. Thank you for stopping by.)
The Peace and Happiness Project 
Yes, I am with you! I am in the Boston area and I think the police handled the capture very well. Yes, the media did run it too long with the same story over and over. I think it is appalling that Rolling Stone has a terrorist on the cover of their magazine thus glorifying him and his actions. On Facebook today the Rolling Stone cover with Sean Collier’s photo instead of the terrorist was circulating. Now, he’s a rockstar, rookie cop! I was so proud of People magazine putting survivors on their cover even though they were all three young and beautiful. At least it was survivors! Great post!
Thank you Georgia! I’m so glad you liked it. I thought it was such a coincidence that I wrote most of it before the news broke. It worked well as a tie in. I haven’t seen an alternate cover on Facebook. Is it something that is in consideration? I hope they pull it. That would be phenomenal!
Thank you for visiting and commenting. I appreciate it.
Missy
You’re pretty much preaching to the choir here…except I didn’t encounter all that stuff because I don’t watch TV and I refuse to be “programmed” with repetitious reporting…How boring! Yes, a very low vibe…Don’t listen and complain about it…just do something else!
I love that you are ahead of me on this. I love your line, “I refuse to be ‘programmed’ with repetitious reporting.” Thank you so much for stopping by, reading and commenting. I appreciate your stance.
Missy
You are welcome!
Thank you for this interesting post, Missy! I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, I haven’t partaken of mainstream media in over 5 years, and choose more positive sources of news that reflect my belief system. On the other hand, news has a way of finding you, especially events like this one. It’s what we choose to do with the news that counts. I would like to read the article to get a fair understanding of their reasoning behind it before I made an absolute judgement on it. Perhaps their focus is on trying to understand how someone gets to the point of being a terrorist, which is actually quite a natural response to tragedies like this. People want to know what has to happen in someone’s mind/experience/spirit to lead them to such destructive actions.
On a different level, the Soul level, I can’t say what his purpose was in taking these actions, but it certainly had the effect of bringing people together and bringing to light so much goodness in the wake of his actions. What if that was his soul’s mission? It is not up to us to decide how someone is to carry out their mission, nor up to us to decide one way is ‘better’ than another, although acts of terrorism are more and more often met with a defiant wave of compassion rather than aggression. I think this is a result of the changing structures that have kept the planet in darkness for so long. We no longer want to fight fire with fire, but instead fight it with Love 🙂
Having him on the cover of Rolling Stone may provide an opportunity for people to find compassion in their hearts for the child this man once was, who was at some point turned to hatred and fear as a way of being, not something you’d wish on any child. It may help them to understand unusual signs in their own children, neighbours or friends. It may help them to realise that we are not so very different that had we been exposed to whatever he was exposed to as a young child, it could have been any one of us. We are all sharing the experience of being human, and if nothing else, look for the humanity that exists in this young man, and has been buried under layers of indoctrination from outside of himself. Look at him as the messenger that delivered a difficult message that awoke so much goodness in thousands of people all at once.
You have brought up many valid and well thought out points. I can appreciate each of them. I do see the point of if it the type of article that is written in such a way as to find where things went wrong in order to prevent others from reaching that point. That would be beneficial. But what I am against is a terrorist being a cover story. I would just like to see more positivity in the news instead of constant coverage of the negative and so much attention being given to criminals and terrorists.
You have really made me think with the perception that perhaps his mission was to create peace in a backwards way. Although I’m not sure I share the same thought, I would prefer to think that way compared to my current belief that his intent was to kill many more, not to bring peace.
I am so grateful for your response.. Thank you for taking the time to read it and put so much thought behind what you said here. It is very appreciated.
Missy