Does attention to shooting miss the mark?
By 
Yesterday’s daytime fatal shooting of a taxi driver near the Prudential Center in Boston was the top story among local media outlets throughout the day and it’s the lead front-page story in both Boston daily newspapers this morning.
The argument for the flood-the-zone coverage, of course, is that the more out of the ordinary an event, the more newsworthy it is.
By that measure, it’s certainly true that daytime shootings in the Back Bay are unusual. But it’s hard to ignore the obvious disparity between this coverage and that given to the dozens of other homicides that occur in the city each year, and hard to avoid the sense, at least as projected by media attention, that gun mayhem is to be expected in crime-prone neighborhoods and lives lost to it there are cheaper.
The Globe account of yesterday’s killing listed no fewer than nine reporters who contributed to the story. The story in the Herald, with its depleted newsroom ranks, had three reporters in the byline.
“It’s shocking because in Boston, it doesn’t happen,” Joe Litvack, treasure of the Independent Taxi Operators Association, told the Globe. “This type of thing just doesn’t happen here, it’s not the usual thing for cab drivers anymore to have worry about this type of thing.”
It’s certainly true that such attacks on cab drivers are not common in the city. But the high-profile coverage of the killing seemed as much driven by its daytime occurrence and its location — in a downtown area filled with shoppers, tourists, and white-collar workers who don’t expect gunshots as background sounds of the city.
There was an echo in Tuesday’s incident to a shooting 20 years ago in very nearly the same spot. In January 1999, a 15-year-old Roxbury teen was shot and wounded in the glass walkway to the Copley Place mall. A 14-year-old was arrested.
Even the Boston clergy working then on the frontlines to stem youth violence were taken aback by the location of the shooting.
“The unspoken rule of the terms of engagement has been broken,” Rev. Eugene Rivers, cofounder of Boston’s Ten Point Coalition, told the Globe.”There is general understanding the neighborhood-based violence is contained, although [not] accepted,” he said, “and you don’t bring violence and mayhem in neutral areas.”
The fact is that we have normalized “neighborhood-based violence” — as long as it occurs in certain neighborhoods.
Following last week’s killing of 12 people at a Virginia Beach municipal office, Democratic presidential candidates Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren both pushed back at the outsized attention given to mass shootings, which account for only a tiny share of gun deaths in the US.
Warren was asked about the Virginia Beach shootings on Saturday at a state Democratic Party convention in California. “It’s not just mass shootings,” she said, adding that each day in America, gun violence occurs “on sidewalks and playgrounds and people’s backyards. It’s happening family by family across the country. And it doesn’t get the same headlines. And that is wrong.”
MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
Brockton Sen. Michael Brady settled the drunken driving charges against him by agreeing to surrender his license for 45 days and remaining on probation for a year. Now the big question is whether the Senate will discipline him in any way. (CommonWealth)
A Globe editorial highlights three important policy proposals — on prescription drug prices, excise taxes on vaping products, and a proposed UMass tuition freeze — that will be dealt with by the legislative conference tasked with hammering out a final 2020 budget plan.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Airbnb is appealing a federal court ruling that upheld a provision in Boston’s new ordinance that levies a $300-per-night fine on sites for rentals that violate the local regulations. (Boston Globe)
John Barth, Jr. is suing Peabody because the town denied him a permit to build a house on a lot he purchased for $1,000 where a house once stood. (Salem News)
Weymouth’s elected and appointed officials will see their pay as much as double next year under a proposal approved by the town council. The measure will raise the mayor’s pay from $110,000 to $140,000 and councilors from $7,500 to $10,000. (Patriot Ledger)
A group is seeking permits to hold a Straight Pride parade in Boston — a counter to the Pride Parade, which celebrates the LGBTQ community. (MassLive)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
Gov. Charlie Baker again calls on Congress to pass legislation ending federal marijuana sanctions in states where pot is legal. (Boston Globe)
American businesses with supply chains that extend into Mexico were blindsided by President Trump’s plan to dramatically raise tariffs on imports from that country – starting at 5 percent next week and reaching 25 percent by October. (NPR)
The Lowell Sun applauds Congressman Seth Moulton for discussing his post-traumatic stress disorder, and says his openness will help diminish the stigma around the disorder that afflicts military veterans.
A first in Congress: The House passes the Dream and Promise Act offering security to several types of immigrants. The outlook in the Senate is not good. (CommonWealth)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Mike Kennealy met with more than 100 municipal and business leaders from across the Cape and Islands on Tuesday to get input for the state’s economic development plan. (Cape Cod Times)
EDUCATION
Scot Lehigh rips the Massachusetts Teachers Association for claiming continually that charter schools “cream” better students, but then vigorously opposing the proposal for a neighborhood-based charter school in New Bedford that would enroll all students in a section of the city. (Boston Globe)
The principal at a Springfield middle school comes out as a transgender man, the third Massachusetts principal to do so. (MassLive)
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
Partners HealthCare ended talks about acquiring Care New England Health System in Rhode Island. (Boston Globe)
ARTS/CULTURE
After controversy this spring over a lack of diversity in its theater award winners, the Independent Reviewers of New England voted to disband, bringing an end to the 23-year-old organization. (WBUR)
TRANSPORTATION
The MBTA lures Richard Henderson from MassDevelopment to head up real estate efforts at the transit authority. (CommonWealth)
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Grocery stores take different approaches to reducing the flow of old food into landfills. Roche Brothers donates vegetables that are about to turn and Stop & Shop trucks old food to a digester in Freetown that produces energy. (WBUR) The burrito chain Boloco uses an app called Food For All to sell food at a discount that would otherwise be trashed. (WBUR)
A Trump administration proposal to improve pipeline safety would require utilities to use redundant systems to prevent over-pressurization – which contributed to the deadly explosions in the Merrimack Valley last year – but US Sen. Ed Markey said it doesn’t go far enough. (WGBH)
Representatives from the US Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection spent Tuesday at the City Pier with members of the Fall River Redevelopment Authority. The agencies are trying to figure out the status of a 2011 remediation plan to remove polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, found on the site in 2002. (Herald News)
CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins found it “odd” that Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe would criticize how she handles prosecutions, as he did last week, but she said she is more disappointed with the Boston Globe for publishing his op-ed. (WGBH)
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has filed a complaint in Plymouth Superior Court alleging the head baker and manager at Brockton-based White’s Bakery violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by creating a hostile work environment. (Brockton Enterprise)
Carlos Rivera, a 47-year-old who has been held without bail after allegedly dropping off 13-year-old Chloe Ricard at a hospital where she was pronounced dead, is now facing charges of child rape, but prosecutors are keeping quiet about the new charge. (Eagle-Tribune)
A protester who blocked an entrance to the Bristol County House of Correction in Dartmouth last year was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 days in jail. Holly Landowne-Stein was part of a protest against the Bristol County House of Correction and the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department agreements with ICE to detain undocumented immigrants. (Standard Times)
The Poynter Institute is teaching North Shore students how to distinguish fact from fiction in the media through its MediaWise project. (Salem News)