What is this, Beirut?

The big news item in town recently, is a shooting in Melbourne in Flinders Lane, on the corner of Flinders Street Station. A pivotal, historical cornerstone of the city.

One man died as he intervened trying to help a woman being pulled from a cab by her hair, and two others were critically injured. The gunman is still at large.

Now I'm not saying it's not newsworthy. I think it is, and I think it deserves to be a major headline. These sorts of things don't normally seem to happen in broad daylight, in a city street in the center of Melbourne. It must have been terrifying for those involved and like some sort of streetscape nightmare for those in the center of town that day; realising the gunman could be striding past them at any moment. But let's put it all into perspective here. Does it really warrant whole daytime hours of uninterrupted television coverage to the detriment of our normal scheduled viewing? Does it warrant three or four stories in a row on every evening news show?

Rachel Rollo from Channel Nine News called it, "a city under siege." One man dead and two critically injured people is what Rachel considers a siege? I hate to tell you this Rachel, but what you call a siege, and much, much worse, goes on all over the world in a constant stream of unpublicised horrors.

Here Rachel: Dictionary.Com's definition of the word siege:

1. The act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible.

(Other possible interpretations here: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=siege

This is a siege Rachel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Beirut

Then we had a grand romp down memory lane, reflecting over all the horrific shootings and related major crimes in Melbourne - Nov 1996, 1987 in Hoddle Street, March 1986 - the Russell Street bombing. In global perspective these are all pretty minor events. But, our Channel Nine News reporter, (not Rachel,) chose to label them, "the day terror came to town."

Channel Nine, you really do love to whip up a healthy frenzy of fear don't you? All this heavily loaded language designed to induce over reaction and shock. You live ina big city people - these things are bound to happen! What's going on here, is Australia suffering some sort of S 11 envy? What makes us so special that a shooting in our city warrants so much self-pity and constant attention? When we carry on about our traumas in the extreme, (no doubtedly designed by TV execs to up ratings,) we look like spoilt Americanized sooky la-la's. Can't we just address it as a news item of considerable merit and leave it alone a bit?

I noticed that seventy-eight people died in a bombing in Bagdhad today - it flashed across the bottom of the screen in fine print and later came up as a minor news report in the world news section. (Not in all News Channel. Let's say thank God for ABC and SBS.)