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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.
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...
Where to begin...
The competition to get to the story first is too great and often over shadows the duty of the new to check facts and report an unbiased account of events.
What is missing is any sort of repercussions for reporting false facts, who do we hold accountable? Unfortunately good news simply does not pull in the desired ratings and ad revenues.
No sig here...
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.
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.