Losing Matt Shepard Summary

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Many people argue that the truth exists; paradoxically, 1they believe that a single notion alone defines truth and at the same time think of what they believe as the fact. Unlike the one people think of as, the fact in actuality is discovered only when it is free from the shroud of concealments, distortion and errors. Fabricated with distortions and concealments, the society’s (accepted)truth no longer is the fact. As social creatures, people conform to how others feel and think; they perceive obliged perception and feelings as the truth and as the genuine feelings they have. “…there to mourn Matt or to make sure that mourning was represented.”(Loffreda, p435), notes Beth Loffreda in her story “Losing Matt Shepard”. Some residents might not…show more content…
Common sense has it that the media does its best to get the readers’ attention; the media realized that people like articles concerning extreme events like deaths, accidents, scandals, etc. For instance, they write about the death of Matt Shepard and the cruel incident happened in the school by a crazy boy named Clark. And now that the media acknowledges limitations of mere reporting, it seeks for more powerful way of attracting readers: exaggeration and distortions. One may ask, “How come? News should always report the “truth”! And people will not believe them if they report a mere lie.”. Unfortunately, the answer for this question is that people believe the accepted “truth” which is defined by rumors, wrong interpretations, etc., not the “fact”. Joseph Stalin once said, “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistics”(Dillard, p184): people no longer feel a genuine sadness toward those “statistical deaths” on the news paper. They are rather attracted to those numbers and treat them as a gossip, ostensibly weeping for the dire accidents. To satisfy the demand for attracting articles, the media distort the fact and fabricates the “truth”. “…scarecrow…the notion that Matt had been strung up in something akin to a crucifixion became the starting point for the reporting and reaction to come”(Loffreda, p428). Well, people agonized over the death of a

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