We were told that shooter Jared Lee Loughner was motivated by caustic campaign rhetoric, that he was told (in his own mind at least) that Giffords should be a literal target for violence.
After Loughner's rampage, we said we wanted more civility in political discourse. But reporter Mckinnon tells us that civility is still quite elusive:
In the days after the shooting, the words from the memorial still fresh, lawmakers pledged to foster a new civility in tribute to Giffords and the others who were injured or killed. Yet one year later, Americans and their elected leaders still struggle to show each other respect when opinions differ. Partisan brinksmanship plays out in Washington. Back home, voters treat lawmakers with scorn and berate one another for differing opinions. Surveys suggest that Americans recognize the lack of civility and want their leaders to behave better, but experts say that until people exercise civility themselves and demand it from their representatives, little will change.My questions about this story are twofold. First, tell me what you think about the writing itself. This piece is a little longer than standard USA Today fare (relatively few of its stories exceed 20 paragraphs). Was it interesting from beginning to end, or did you start to lose interest at some point? If your answer is the former, what kept you engaged in the story? If it was the latter (and this is, by the way, an entirely acceptable answer) at what point did you start to lose interest? Can you pinpoint the aspects of the story that bored you? How could it have been made better?
Also, if you want, feel free to talk about the media's role in fostering civility in public discourse. Should the media be interested in pursuing this? How could that be done? One could argue that visceral
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-01/giffords-civility/52322052/1
