The New Media and Serial Killers
The Changing Guard of Media may have some Blind Spots.
I was watching this Son of Sam Documentary on Netflix (Netflix seems to be the home for serial killer docs now, for some strange reason), anyway, it got me thinking about how New York was riveted, scared, and really zeroed in on the local news when these murders were happening.
Then I started to think about how Elon Musk has made X THE spot for news now, except... That's mainly national news or world news. Where does one go for local news? I can honestly say that I haven't watched a local news channel since they turned off the analog signal for the local networks. And The Atlanta Journal and Constitution is such a leftist propaganda rag that I've never liked reading the hacks that try to pass themselves off as journalists there. I can only imagine how bad they are now.
So my mind circles back around to these deranged serial killers and I'm thinking... How would we know if there was an active local serial killer?
My next thought is that of the Idaho murders and Bryan Kohberger. That was publicized and we all knew about that. But... That was a one night mass murder. Because it was so horrific, it picked up national attention. He was a mass killer that was stopped before he may have become a serial killer. So what about a single person who is killed with time in-between and then another person is killed a week or month later? How would the local citizens be informed? It's not like you’re going to see that trending on X and I'm pretty sure serial killers haven't just stopped being fucking psycho all of a sudden.
The FBI estimates that are between 25 and 50 active serial killers per year. Are none of these cases publicized anymore? Does the "news" not focus on these cases because politics and world news are a bigger draw and make more money for the media? Are mainstream journalists bloggers not even bothering to put in the effort to cover these cases?
It appears to me that we have blind spot in the media. At one time people were more involved with their local happenings than modern days where everyone is concerned about the next big thing from out there (because now, those big things out there absolutely have a trickle down effect). Maybe the oppressive surveillance state makes up for this? However, even with Kohberger, you can’t tell me that the authorities ignored all of the theories from the citizen journalists out there. They were much more into the story than the mainstream fakers. Several citizen journalists went full Gonzo and inserted themselves into the story and did interviews and followed up with leads that police had not done. In this particular case, though, the police did an excellent job in capturing the psycho.
The closest I can think of there being a “serial killer watch” are the few accounts on X that track down, entrap, and remove pedophiles from the streets. They normally call the police and have them meet them as they are talking live with the pedophile and confronting them with the chat logs they have on them. The point is not how these accounts ensnare people, but the fact that there are accounts dedicated to just this topic. Are there accounts on X dedicated to exclusively hunting down serial killers? Does anyone know of one?
If X and citizen journalism is going to replace the deceitful and manipulative mainstream media, it has to be doing so for every topic and every level of society, down to the local level. Otherwise, people will get hurt because these monsters go unseen.
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You raise an excellent point - local news, while still trapped in it's Anchorman legacy with bromides like "News You Can Use" was a starting point for conversations. The problem as I see it is that the major networks paved the way for the celebrity of national politics to really absorb everything, making us look away from what was happening in our midst. Local news brought us back briefly, but it was so bad that the higher entertainment value of the pundit personalities would keep 70% or more of our attention. Today no one watches local news like you say.
I was a precinct delegate in '22 and was floored how many weren't aware of the bevy of 2A bills stacked up to erode concealed carry and open carry, which has been a Michigan tradition. And the agency that was doling out billions to foreign manufacturing was not well know either. As you say, we need to cover all the topics as we shun MSM.