Are images of death, with ads, the new norm?

Last week I read a horrible story online about a TV reporter and cameraman in Virginia who had been shot and killed during a live interview.

I had just woken up and, barely awake, clicked the link to read more about the story then clicked another link I thought would be a video news report about the shooting.

A moment later I was watching an advertisement for a frozen, ready-to-microwave and eat sausage and egg breakfast sandwich.

And moments after it ended I watched about three seconds of the on-air interview before witnessing the murder as the young woman reporter shrieked in pain and ran off-camera away from the deadly hail of bullets.

Soon after, the camera angle went from level to the ground, now looking up at the early morning sky as the second victim of the carnage now lay dying.

This summer, like none other I can remember, we have been inundated with videos of death circulating on TV, youtube, wannabe cyber news outlets like Newsy and countless other venues.

They are often preceded by commercials for breakfast sandwiches, hotel booking agents, insurance and car companies.

In the past we've seen advertising companies pull their sponsorships from sports figures and actors who fall from grace for their misdeeds.

But a YouTube video of a man being shot and killed by another man?

"Oh, yeah, we're fine with that. Put us in front of that baby. It's killer."

So now it's come to this. America has so many surveillance cameras in so many nooks and crannies of this country, that there's bound to be at least one violent act recorded every day.

And what does that mean? To some, it's just another revenue stream.

The day of that horrible, horrific Virginia shooting social media was burning up with tweets and retweets, likes and shares of both the TV video and the video posted online by the shooter, himself.

Much of the videos were disseminated with frontend ads that sold everything from cars to cookies.

Television stations reporting on the tragedy stopped short of showing the actual shots ringing out and the bodies falling to the ground.

They say traumatic events over time become muted in their impact on our psyche. But that young journalist, so young, so pretty, so innocent, so happy.

I think of all the videos of deadly confrontations that are shown in their near entirety on television or online and it makes me wonder, Could the entire country be suffering from PTSD?

For decades there has been a debate about how desensitizing the visualization of constant violence could be.

Perhaps that constant visualization is taking its toll now, because the redundancy of senseless violence seems growing.

And before all those images, there's an ad for a breakfast sandwich, maybe a latte.