Stereotypes

I've been thinking a lot lately about stereotypes and how they affect the media's coverage of events, especially in light of the recent murder of the UNT student. Often times, when the media is covering a story similar to this one, they always lean on stereotypes to describe the victim. Even people close to the victim are guilty of using "stock phrases" to describe the person they lost. For instance in this case, Melanie Goodwin was a sweet, loving, caring, Christian girl who never met a stranger. It is unfortunate that stereotypes can over shadow the real tragedy of this story. It probably is true that she was a wonderful, good hearted girl that attended church regularly and was nice to everyone. But, it seems to me that while these things probably are true, they get masked by these common stereotypes. Her story is horrific and terribly sad, but it makes it hard to identify her as the person she really is because it seems that every person that is involved in a tragedy like this that gets media attention, can be described this way. So, while stereotypes are meant to help their viewers "identify" with the victim and the story, they can also over shadow the severity of an event.
I think I might have just gotten on a major soapbox, but hopefully this makes sense!