SDP_047 “Projected Benchmarking” – Garbage Media Ploys Following A Mass Shooting

By David P. Perrodin | October 8, 2017

Podcast-Dr. Perrodin explains how mass media irresponsibly portrayed the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas massacre as an act of evil that any of us could encounter, in any location, at any moment. In addition, false articles defeated algorithm “truth” filters, journalism was sacrificed for short-term ratings, the collective public anxiety rocketed with no efforts to point out the counter-balance of “good” occurring in the country (such as thousands of Cajun Navy Relief workers still helping people devastated by last month’s hurricanes); and public figures and persons with authority were manipulated by eager reporters asked leading questions. The tragedy preyed upon the insatiable thirst of people to learn what happened and why it happened – and the latter will be rhetoric or pundits’ proclamations as truth is revealed, as best as possible, months later following an exhaustive forensic study.

 

DIRECT LINK to MP3 of this Episode:  https://tinyurl.com/SDP47-AUDIO

 

MEDIA MESS

Leading social media sites struggled to parse authentic stories from fabricated stories. As we rely more on algorithms and bots and less on humans, this flurry of “questionably verified news” is what we will always deal with in such an event.  News sites want clicks and people will grasp at any information. Dr. Perrodin advises everyone to listen to the police information present at the scene for the most reliable information.

LOCAL NEWS SPIN

David expresses his perspective of local news TV quickly interviewing school administrators and police officers about how they would have (A) responded to this incident had it happened “here”, (B) How they train for such incidents, and (C) Advice for the audience.  These are leading questions and aim to accomplish, what Dr. Perrodin refers to as “Projected Benchmarking”, or forcing people to imagine that the situation and context of the Vegas shooting could happen at any location at any moment. It’s actually quite simple to pull off this illusion as people are primed to want to express that they are prepared (whatever that means as sentinel events are unpredictable and nonlinear). Massive assumptions are made about the incident and preliminary reports are vetted. Rhetoric is unchecked.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ASKING HOW YOU WOULD HANDLE THE INCIDENT IF IT HAPPENED HERE?

In US, approximately 100 people a day are killed in car crashes, yet we only talk about “sentinel” events – and only other comparable shooting of this nature was Texas Clock Tower massacre on 1966. We so readily are willing to overlook that each event is bound to context, situation and time. ADVICE ARTICLES ARE GENERIC & USELESS. Advice is universal when recited by the news talking head or the police.  Telling someone to always run during an active shooter event is not sound advice as one could run directly into the line of fire, especially at night amongst 22,000 people…and what if there are multiple shooters?

DR. PERRODIN HAS CONFIDENCE IN THESE NEWS SOURCES

He encourages people to obtain information from Wikinews, Reuters or Trunews.com. David also discourages the tendency to follow the clickbait headings dealing with motives.

FOLLOW

 

In this episode, Dr. Perrodin argues against several of the points made in the following article:  “Surviving a mass shooting: 9 quick decisions made by those those who’ve lived” by Korin Miller (October 5, 2017). https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/surviving-mass-shooting-9-quick-decisions-made-whove-lived-110236098.html?.tsrc=fauxdal

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Posted in Active Shooter Research, Determining Priorities, Mental Health / Mental Well-Being, Safety Doc Podcasts, Safety Facts, Sensemaking & In-The-Moment Decision Making and tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,