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Why the Story of Red Lake Came and Went
"Sadly, the story will soon disappear from the mind of the public."
By Nico Savidge
I was saddened when a teenager from Red Lake Minnesota, a remote reservation for the Chippewa Tribe killed nine people and himself at his former school. I was surprised later that night when the local news spent just five minutes on the shooting, using only the affiliate in a city near Red Lake.
In the New York Times the next day, the story on Red Lake was extremely small, three small columns tucked into the bottom on the front page. The article wasn’t even as big as a picture about the Terry Schiavo case. Apparently, one woman’s court case is more important than ten dead Indians.
After the Columbine disaster, there was a ton of media attention on the shooting there. The news had reporters getting reaction to the event in the Bay Area, a profile of the town, and stories of survivors that took up almost half of the newscast. Columbine stayed in the news for the weeks that followed.
The next day it was, “Columbine, A Day Later.” After a week had passed, the stories were, “A Week Later Columbine Still Mourns” and after a month it was the same thing. On Tuesday, it took the news almost half a half hour before they talked about the Minnesota incident. The story had all but disappeared from the homepage of CNN.com by Wednesday.
Why is there a lack of coverage? Because, to the news, these were poor Indians killing each other. I guarantee it, if someone kills twenty people at a school in Compton, South Chicago or Brooklyn, it still won’t get the attention of Columbine. Sadly, the story will soon disappear from the mind of the public and will only remain in the minds of the people of Red Lake.
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