Too Many Contrarian Opinions

I wish the media would start putting the bin Laden story to rest. It took less than a few hours to dump his body into the sea, but it may be an everlasting news event if things continue as they have been the past few days. Media sources everywhere are in the doubting mode now, as in "should they have killed Osama or taken him alive", "should they release pictures of his bullet ridden body", "did the Pakistani's really not know Osaka lived in his elaborate compound in full view for as long as the last six years" and on and on. It's illustrative of the fact that in this age of instant communication nothing ever dies except the human body.

"I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn't look as if justice is seen to be done, " said Rohan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday. Yep! Even the head of churches in foreign lands have questions and objections to raise, and a willing media to allow the pot of controversy to be stirred.

Even the U. S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs has its doubts. They will discuss complaints by some Native Americans (before political correctness they were called the "Indians", as in cowboys and Indians.....I wonder why "cowboys" is acceptable now not but the term "indians" is not?) of the use of the code name "Geronimo" for the military operation that killed Osama. The objection about using the 19th century indian Chief Geronimo's name concerns the issue of linking "one of the greatest Native American heroes" (the politically correct crowd denies Geronimo had his own aggressive and murderous history) to a mass murderer, an "inappropriate use of Native American icon" say with the terrorist leader.

All these opinions and more are nice to read and hear, but why search out and air them so soon to only create controversy and obscure the fact that the worst greatest mass murderer has been removed from his homicidal warpath? Do we have to have every contrarian view about every aspect of every major event plastered on the front pages of newspapers and in other media news reports before we even digest the event itself? I fear we will get it regardless of whether it is appropriate or not, because this indeed is the age of over-information.

Since the explosion of electronic media and its ability to inform at an instant, we have not yet learned to separate the wheat from the chaff in what we report and hear as news. When the minority view is promoted to the front page and becomes more prominent than the story itself we obscure truth with speculation. Controversy is good because it makes us reflect on our beliefs. And minority views are healthy asides to read.

But there isn't always "another story" to the main one that is so important that it should consume the event itself. It might be better to hear the story first, and then hear the dissenting views afterward. But then, that's just my own "minority viewpoint" on the health of news reporting today.