Video A Critique of the Boston Bombing News Coverage (Video) 175
Robin:
David: I think the overall coverage, the ‘overall’ coverage has been better than it has been in years past, but I am not sure that you would blame or credit Skype or Facebook or social media with that. I think the media has just learned from mistakes they made in the past, not to get so far out on a limb, with the notable exception of when it was reported that a suspect was in custody. Now I have no question somebody told CNN that was the case, but sometimes sources don’t know what they are talking about, and it was clearly the case in that circumstance.
Robin: Well, they picked it up from the New York Post who picked it from well, the Boston Police Department says, ‘not us’. So we don’t know.
David: Probably a federal investigator if I were guessing, but who knows. They believed it. Everybody wanted to believe that a suspect was in custody. They had just had the videotape, so putting it all together it seemed only too logical that we have an image, we must have arrested the person in the image. That’s believing, I think, in science just a little bit too much.
Robin: I would say. Now what about the medical care on the spot? How did it look to you? Because Slashdot people, you have seen David Coursey in his journalist role from ZDNet and all that, but what you may not know is he is also an EMT guy. And he does that, he has done it both volunteer and professionally, so he is actually qualified not only to talk about the journalism here but about the actual treatment on the spot. David, how was it?
David: Well, if you were going to pick a place to leave two bombs, right across from the medical tent is probably not the best place, particularly at an event such as the Boston Marathon, and at the finish line of the Boston Marathon where reasonably every resource is already in place. They were already expecting potentially lots of people being old, falls, dehydrated heat related injuries; they were all prepared for that. They weren’t expecting shrapnel. But the emergency doctors were there – EMTs and paramedics were there, the people from that side of the street ran over to the other side of the street, immediately started working on the victims, and doubtless, lives were saved. Because this explosion, if there is a right place for an explosion, this explosion occurred at the right place, at about the right time.
Robin: Now let me ask you another question that also where you are in Tracy, California, if this true. One ER doctor in Boston was on TV saying, ‘Yeah, well, also what helped us is a lot of our docs have been in Iraq, they’ve been in Afghanistan, they’ve been volunteers in Haiti, so we have people including me” he said, who have really good experience dealing with wounds and mass problems.
David: We’ve learned a lot from wars. The Vietnam War taught us a lot about emergency medicine, as have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the most amazing things I’ve seen in the coverage is a researcher at MIT who does prosthetics who said that a year from now, next year’s Boston marathon, science makes it possible that many of those runners who had legs amputated might be able to run, or at least walk again in next year’s marathon. And that is an incredible medical advance.
Robin: Now I am going to ask you kind of a political question. Okay, do you feel terrorized?
David: No.
Robin: Which are you, afraid or angry?
David: Neither.
Robin: Okay. Then how do you feel?
David: I am sorry the incident occurred in a free society - it is hard to protect ourselves; there are a certain number of nuts out there. I am happy that an Al Qaeda affiliate hasn’t claimed credit; I am happy that this doesn’t appear to be a war on America. But we’ll just have to see what happens in terms of arresting a suspect and bringing people to justice for this crime.
Robin: Okay. So if you are supporting a terrorist group, and you want to terrorize America, this is a failure, isn’t it?
David: This would not be the best way to do it. Nobody is particularly terrorized by this. If anything, we are seeing that ‘send us evil and we will throwback a lot more good in its face.’I think that is going to be the long term legacy of this tragedy that yes people died, yes, people were injured, some of them very severely, but the response is going to be what people remember.
The big rush (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Worst. Coverage. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Dunno. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not ask us again in a day or two (when the transcript is ready).
Jon Stewart Said It Well (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Get resigned to further losses of freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
transcript or GTFO (Score:5, Insightful)
If I wanted video I'd be on Youtube.
Re:Can you stop the 24/7 coverage now? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Stop complaining about it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:The big rush (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Back on Sept 11, 2001, the media were far worse. Network and news outlets on television and the web were trying to outbid each other on the body count. 5,000, 15,000, could be has high as 40,000. Really appalling. They didn't know what else to do in their own confusion, but play the horrifying videos over and over and try to make the whole thing as grim as they could, to keep viewers glued and ultimately numbing them.
I have a book with collections of newspaper front pages from December 7, 8, 9 ... 1941. Back in that day the news focused on what was known, body counts were off the pages for the first few days and then only included known dead. The final tally wasn't truly known in the news for almost one year. News moved slower, people gave themselves more time to think.
The idiocy of the AP running a rumor of an arrest and showing how quick every other outlet is willing to parrot this and seek confirmation later, showed what a swarm of locusts mentality there is in the media these days.
Re:Can you stop the 24/7 coverage now? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:No info + 24/hr news cycle = failure (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The big rush (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what the public seems to demand now.
No. Just no.
The public would like the facts, as quickly as possible.
The news media only listened to the second half of that sentence. Much like their reporting.
Blame 60 Minutes (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [harvard.edu]
Re: Can you stop the 24/7 coverage now? (Score:4, Insightful)
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!