Small Holes Sink Big Ships
8:22 PM
The Rolling Stone Faceroll
The Rolling Stone Magazine featured an article and front cover of one of the criminals of the Boston Marathon bombing tragedy. First and foremost, my prayers and condolences go out to anyone who was affected by this incident and I hope the victims had a quick recovery and can enjoy life once again. I also hope that security measures at public events like that are taken more seriously. It's unfortunate that we have to put so much effort into simple things just to make them safe, comfortable and secure. Dear assholes of the world, can't a brotha' run in peace? Apparently not. :/
So anyways, the magazine headlines this dudes face on the cover and makes an article about it. My opinion on the matter is simply this. Why would you glorify someone who has caused so much pain and suffering upon many people? Now, I didn't read the article and I'm never going to. The article may be explaining who he was and how his life changed for the worst and his behavior collapsed into these recent events or maybe this was something he and whoever he was working with planned out in advance over the course of their entire life. I don't really care who was involved, why they did it etc... what they did was horrible and the families affected by the incident may be able to recover, but they will never have their peace of mind back 100%. So from my understanding, the magazine company received a massive shitstorm of negative feedback from subscribers and society in general about how horrible they are for making this story and putting it in their magazine, let alone putting the dudes face on the cover. And to that, I say... good going. I can understand from a business perspective, something controversial and sensitive would draw a lot of attention and could potentially get a mass of people to purchase the magazine just to see what kind of article was written. However, I can also see that because of the backlash it received, the money they made from selling issues of the magazine vs the money they didn't make as well as losing future customers and ongoing loyal customers probably exceeded any profit they made from the issue. I could be wrong but when a company makes such a "thin ice decision" like that, it can really flip either way. Your action can either be a complete success or a complete downfall. Unfortunately, for something like this, if you piss a customer off.... someone who was previously purchasing every issue of your magazine, and now they boycott you and will never purchase anything of yours ever again... is going to suck. With the internet and multi-media technology already consuming the newspaper/magazine/book community, to creating a bad reputation like this, must really hurt business.
Attention, regardless of whether or not it is positive attention or negative attention, is attention nonetheless. You can put diamonds on poop, it's still poop. So whether you are praising an individual or reminding the world of how horrible they are, you're reinforcing people to reflect on that person, to think about them and remind them of what this person did. While everyone is trying to recover and heal from the situation, the company just HAD to drop the bomb on the world and remind them of the person, their face, who they were and what they did.
I understand that the media makes a lot of money from reporting the news and recent events. Most of the time, the news reports negative situations. Every now and then you'll see a story about a duck who takes care of an injured kitten. Or a person who rescues their neighbor from a kidnapping etc... but most of the time it's about drug deals, deaths, suicides, bombings etc... and while those are important things to be aware of and such, why do negative stories have more weight than positive stories? I mean, I really wish that people would make articles about the good things happening in the world versus all of the bad things. Like I said, I understand that certain things should be acknowledged but often it's bad things instead of good things.
When it comes to situations like the Boston Bombing, I think the heroes and victims should be glorified and not the criminals. Now, at the same time, I also think the victims should be given privacy and time to heal instead of having publicity all up in their face and on their minds. However, I think the money-making articles and magazine photos etc... should be "awarded" to the people who helped turn a negative situation into a community-promoting positive one. I want to know how the victims are feeling, how they are recovering and continuing life. I want to know if they made full recoveries or if some of them require special medical care for the rest of their life etc... I want to know what kind of award the police and medical officials received upon rescuing and handling the situation like responsible enforcement... etc... I don't think the bomber should be the one getting the attention, the big photo on the front of a magazine.
So to the magazine creators and anyone involved with that article in particular, I really hope this was a huge lesson in terms of morals and business. There are some things that could generate a lot of money, but could also destroy your fan base and this was one of them. For any other media companies, take some wisdom from this recent event and try to avoid making the same choices. It's okay to lightly touch subjects of this matter, but to put them on the front page and dedicate a full on article about the person responsible for a horrible incident is too much.
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