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A Critique of the Boston Bombing News Coverage (Video)
David Coursey has spent a lot of his life as a journalist, specializing in IT coverage for most of it. He's written for ZDNet and eWeek, Forbes, and other well-known publications, and has had his stories linked from Slashdot more than a few times over the years. What he is not as well known for is his expertise as an EMT, a field he has been in as both a volunteer and professional since the rocks in California (where he lives) were still soft enough that the Flintstones used them as pillows. He and I were chatting on Facebook yesterday, and I realized that David's views on media coverage of the recent Boston Marathon bombings might be worth sharing. Do you think what he's saying is valid? Do you agree or disagree with him? Or some of each?
We need a story now, quick. We need something to put on airtime because our marketing is calling around our advertising clients to see who wants to bid on the next hour of airtime. The big need to get something up quick, even if it's very low quality, such as a poorly recorded video interview without a transcript... oh, wait...
Coverage has been one completely bogus claim after another, always from unnamed sources.
Blast from second floor inside building. Oh wait, no it wasn't.
Two bombs placed in trash cans. Oh wait, no they weren't.
Authorities have found and "blown up" a number of other bombs. Oh wait, no they haven't.
A dark skinned suspect has been arrested. Oh wait, there is no such suspect.
Why not ask us again in a day or two (when the transcript is ready).
I can't seem to play the video and there's no transcript but I was impressed with Jon Stewart's drawing and quartering of CNN's coverage. He hit the nail on the head of what "journalistic integrity" has fallen to. Jon Stewart was saying CNN had an 'exclusive' story on the arrest ... exclusive because there was no arrest.
Get on Twitter, say some stuff that sounds legit. Sit back and watch it retweeted, then it'll hit the blogs and finally the 'news.' And all they have to do is try to track down the original source (you) but they seldom do. And that's what "crowdsourced" news has come to. Whenever someone heralds the amazing results from crowdsourced news, it's always post hoc cherry picked results of an actual first hand account or someone who got it right. They seldom look at the entire volume of tweets prior to what we know is true and what is conjecture/wrong.
My work here is dung.
Whatever else this story will do, it will further undermine any objection to CCTV cameras everywhere, especially if the bomber gets caught as a result of them.
If I wanted video I'd be on Youtube.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The concentration on the Boston bombing is ridiculous considering that Iraq had twenty car bombings that same day. It's ridiculous that they dropped every single other news story to cover only the Boston story, and then repeated the same five minutes' worth of information 24 hours a day. They may as well have shut off the antenna at that point.
Seriously, stop fucking watching the 24 hr news channels. If you all weren't watching, then they wouldn't be making any money. You can't complain about something that you regularly participate in willingly. No one is FORCING YOU to pay attention to this fucking shit.
The concentration on the Boston bombing is ridiculous considering that Iraq had twenty car bombings that same day. It's ridiculous that they dropped every single other news story to cover only the Boston story, and then repeated the same five minutes' worth of information 24 hours a day. They may as well have shut off the antenna at that point.
To quote the Ninja Turtles cartoon:
"Dog bites man? that's not news, Man Bites dog, that's news!"
The significance of a news story is inversely related to how frequently similar incident occurs. Bombings happen all the time in Iraq so they are only rarely worth international news coverage. Bombings like this are almost unheard of in the United States, which makes it more significant news.
However I will grant you that 24 hour coverage was unnecessary.
CNN/NBC/Fox all want to be the first to get the story out. No matter what, for some reason being first though bad info - is good.
In other words, the fourth estate has been reduced to the level of a slashdot first post.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No, seriously. Up until 60 Minutes came along News was considered a sort of loss leader for networks. It was something they felt required to have but no one expected to make money at it. They simply reported the facts and tried to guess the weather. Then 60 Minutes came along. No one expected it would make money. I mean a news show making money? No way! Surprise, it made money. It did REALLY well. Everyone had to have one and then they began to realize they could draw eyes to their news shows. Ever since then it's been downhill. We now have multiple channels dedicated to nothing but "news" and by god if there's nothing exciting going on we'll dig something up! Investigative reporting? Meh, not so much. That requires time and work and someone might scoop us! No, now they just report things as fast as they can and they make them as exciting as they can to draw eyes. The more fear the more people turn on their TV sets and gawk at the shows and yes inevitably the ads. the commercialization of "news" was one of THE worst things to happen to television and hell even print media. One need only look as far as the grocery checkout to figure out how that went too. Why we've even got news channels that skew and spin their views for specific markets. How else can you explain the Faux News channel and CNN and MSNBC all spinning the same stories in different directions? they have all targeted a demographic for their "news" and want eyeballs for their ads.
Frankly it's pretty damned disgusting and disheartening. If you're old enough at all to remember a time when we had news shows with just a scrap of integrity you realize just how far we've fallen all in the name of making a fucking dollar. Bleah!
P.S. Think I'm full of it? My citation after a 5 second Google search... http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102153/The-Transformation-of-Network-News.aspx
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However, there was no news coverage about CISPA was there? I'm not sure any News station has every explained it's pros and cons, let alone took a 5 minute break from their "Live Boston" coverage to discuss the vote.
You have to blame something more reasonable than MURAKA NEWS BRAH!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.