There’s no question about whether or not the media lacks honesty. As soon as any tragedy happens the media swoops in and attempts politicize it. Reason has a nice list of politicizing attempts made by the media regarding the recent shooting in Aurora, Colorado. If we were to believe everything the media has said so far the shooter was a occupying member of the Tea Party who was bullied for playing video games and liking Star Trek.
These attempts to politicize the shooting are blatant attempts at getting ratings (and the networks know they are guaranteed rating when covering this). What was the motive of the shooter? In all likelihood he’s just crazy and no rational person will be able to make sense of any justification given by him. People don’t like hearing that though, they want closure, they want something they can understand. The media understands this and exploits it for ratings. Media companies that traditionally align with the left will attempt to blame the shooting on the right while media companies that traditionally align with the right will attempt to blame the shooting on the left. One side will try to connect the shooter with the Tea Party movement while the other side will attempt to connect the shooter with the Occupy movement. Those who align themselves with the left will latch onto accusations that the shooter was aligned with the right in an attempt to justify their own political views and vise versa.
In the end people don’t want to hear he was merely crazy. We can’t deal with crazy, we can legislate it away, we can’t predict who is going to go crazy and stop them beforehand, and that’s the opposite of what most people want to hear.