No Stupid Questions

Propaganda. Soldiers and Cops are tools of the ruling class dressed in the guise of protecting citizens.

Similar to why a "dog bites man" situation is unremarkable, unlike a "man bites dog".

They romanticize these jobs in every form of art and media so that suckers, I mean brave young people, will sign up for those jobs. Because the media caters to the average dumbass, the media goes along with the narrative.

Because the media is deep throating the boot. The rich bastards that own it don't give a fuck about you, me or that nurse that got stuck with a dirty needle. They will tell you what matters and what is or isn't news and how you should feel about it.

The media doesn't work for us.

They maintain the status quo and protect the power of the bourgeois so they pour influence into making sure they are supported by who should be their enemies.

Just propaganda. That’s all. America likes hero’s. And hero’s can only wear a uniform.

I think it's the context. IIRC, they were at/near the White House hinting that it was a political attack. And right now, due to the US politics, everyone's fantasizing about a civil war; so anything that hints at it will get clicks. Clicks = more traffic to their websites = more ad revenue

Because glorifying and elevating, soldiers and cops is one of the ways the state gets people to become soldiers and cops, especially certain kind soft people. It also helps to increase public support for the institutions that oppress and suppress people in behalf of the state.

Propaganda and all that, yes.

It’s also largely about the fact that—in theory—these are two jobs that involve ‘putting your life on the line’ to protect and defend innocent civilians, and usually in dire circumstances involving dangerous weapons/violent people. (NOT defending cops/US military, but just pointing out why those jobs can be publicly revered.)

Also, in many/most(?) other countries, shooting two people absolutely would register nationally because civilian gun violence is a big deal and not normal around the world. You happen to live in the one country on the planet where guns vastly outnumber people and mass shootings are a daily regular occurrence.

But yeah. Propaganda. Mostly that.

Because if people worked out that most people are decent human beings, they wouldn't be able to fear monger with their police propaganda puff pieces.

Because we live in a fascist police state, duh.

Because the killings are targeted actions that are arguably justifiable in the face of tyrannical action.

If a story broke about a criminal gang who all wore identifiable colors and claimed the right to stop anyone you saw and bully them to the point of death, you'd demand that effective (violent) action be taken to stop them. But because the gang is "the police" and nominally controlled by elected officials and the courts, there is a public policy reason to treat both their misbehavior and the public reactions thereto as something categorically different.

(I'd be all in for abolishing police costumes and requiring them to act only within the bounds of permissable behavior for the rest of us, FWIW )

Simple there’s a whole lot less military personnel then there are citizens.

Same logic of why do we hear more about plant crashes than car crashes. There’s a ton more car crashes. So the car crashes don’t register.

There’s less military so when something happens to them it becomes newsworthy

I think there are two general (human) media preferences at work: "if it bleeds, it ledes" superceded by which deaths are more extraordinary. So soldiers murdered in peacetime is noteworthy. They could've become accountants but chose a career where there is a real and high risk of death. Btw I fear it's that death math that made medical professionals drop out of noteworthiness post-pandy, i.e. the threat is real but the risk has gone down again. I think children dying generally of tragic circumstances will be noteworthy. Nurses contracting AIDS or non-famous people dying of natural causes become less noteworthy. And I use noteworthy here as what they chose to cover in their newsrooms. They have financial interests to consider as well, which brings us back to "if it bleeds."

The American filter generally erases many "mundane" gun deaths from visibility. Either people are so numb it doesn't register as the tragedy that it is or it doesn't get covered. There are plenty of places on earth where a single gunshot fired in anger that would make headlines.

There is a worldwide blindness to traffic deaths. We have just accepted that this is how many people die. So if something more interesting happens elsewhere, the t-boned accountant on the way to Walmart just gets dropped.

So there are a number of factors that influence what makes the news or not. The list goes on.

I would also say that media coverage is not prescriptive for who you should feel empathy for. We cannot all feel all the tragedies on this planet at once. We'd go mad. You pick and choose as a defense mechanism. So if you don't feel that much empathy for these national guardsmen, I kind of get it. If you don't like how much media coverage it's getting, I can definitely understand that. The problem is just that when you say this out loud you open yourself up to criticism, like: you don't feel for the people who died while sworn to defend your freedom! What about children and nurses? That's just whataboutism! Etc. So I would suggest you follow your own heart and change your media consumption when it bothers you. Or you'll end up in a culture war debate about whose lives matter more.