Quasi burner account here -- I've worked in news my entire adult life, and have thought about this stuff a lot -- and why we cover the things we do.

Let's look at this through the lens of something less emotionally fraught. My girlfriend used to be absolutely terrified to fly. I kept telling her that we were way more likely to get into an accident in the Uber on the way to the airport than the flight itself, but that didn't always help. She may have understood that intellectually, but emotionally, there was a disconnect. Here's my hypothesis:

- News Coverage -- (and ill get to this more in a sec.) The news (at least in any decent size market) cannot POSSIBLY cover every motor vehicle crash. They are far too common, and, therefore, probably not news. I suppose you could cover something like an uptick in motor vehicle crashes, or an abnormally dangerous intersection, but at that point you're now talking about a trend and not a specific incident with specific victims, and you might as well be talking about a budget.

- Fundamental understanding of the mechanics -- The average person can probably tell you why a car moves. Now, I am not saying they will be doing their own oil changes or any more serious car maintenance (I live in NYC and do not even own a car), but they can probably tell you about the pistons and the engine and how it turns the wheels and stuff. Ask an average person why a 175,000 lb metal jetliner can soar five miles over the surface of the earth for hours at a time, and I am less confident you will get a reasonable answer. And even if you do, there may be less of a connection between the words they are saying and whether or not they really believe it. Planes in the sky are magic.

- Who is in control -- Most of the time if you are in a car, you are driving -- or, someone you know and trust is driving. (I say most because of cabs and Ubers and maybe a carpool that you just don't like.) Human beings tend to believe that THEY can avoid danger. Yes, those other people crashed their cars, but I'm a GOOD DRIVER. When you're in an airplane and watching "The Hangover II" (what an amazingly bad movie, btw) you have to trust a stranger to fly this thing that you don't really understand (see above point.)

So -- same thing with mass shootings. They're rare (or at least used to be, I do wonder if the recent uptick in shootings is having an effect on people's interest, though thats another issue. They are still rare, compared to things like car crashes.)

- We can cover school/workplace/church/etc shootings because they're aren't 20 in an hour.
- We don't really understand why someone would be driven to do this. Much like maybe knowing how a plane works, we may be able to spout talking points about mental health and access to weapons and all of that, but we (hopefully?) cannot REALLY understand what drives a person to wake up in the morning, assemble an arsenal, and murder a bunch of people. There's a form of fascination to this, regardless of how perverse.
- Once again, we are not in control. We might be driving the car, and think we can swerve out of the way when we need to, but if you are sitting in an office/school/church and someone comes in firing an automatic weapon, you are fundamentally not in control of the situation.

News reflects what people are interested in, or at least it should. For all of the talk about what the media covers, there really isnt a "THE MEDIA." The media is a group of people like me who live in communities and have friends and families, and -- I hate to break this to you -- while we may have pressures from external sources direct or indirect, we do not have weekly meetings where we conspire what agendas we want to push or make people fear. (They became monthly meetings because of a problem with the caterer.)

People are afraid of school shootings, much like they can be afraid of plane crashes. They dont understand them. They fear not being in control. They are rare. It's harder to say "that won't be me. And so news covers it, and parents worry, and citizens demand solutions*

*Also I hope it goes without saying that there SHOULD be a solution. We don't take car crashes lying down -- there are constant safety improvements added on to cars that have made driving fundamentally safer.