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...
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Oh you forgot, we need to be the first so screw fact checking by calling the police dept to see if they actually arrested any one and just run the story that they did arrest someone based on unconfirmed rumor.
Re:The big rush (Score:5, Interesting)
Poynter.org (Score:2)
I'm sure it'll come up sooner or later if you follow Poynter [poynter.org] -- they cover journalism / misdeeds of journalists / etc.
They've got a pretty good roundup of criticisms [poynter.org], mostly in regard to some news channels refusing to apologize for their errors.
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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.
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We went through similar reporting in the UK on the tube/bus bombings. I watched that reporting as it happened, on two channels at once - not because I care to be that up-to-date, but because the reporting itsself interested me. Sky News and BBC. Both reported a lot of things which were soon after revealed to be false - varying estimates not just for the casualties, but the number of bombs!
This is what the public seems to demand now. News reporting just seconds behind events, from the front line, as it happe
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.
Re:The big rush (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because the second half of that sentence is effectively the important one. It's difficult to tell if a report is the facts. But it's easy to tell if it's first.
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]
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Not that long ago, around 10'ish years every major news agency had investigative reporters. Living in Detroit, there was Steve Smith covering the Kwame scandals. Before that, he had stories on corruption in all kinds of other areas. Public service workers (tracking them working a few hours a week getting paid for 40 hrs), police corruption, utilities corruption, etc.. It was the highest rated show in Detroit for years. It was real journalism.
Long before Kwame went to trial for anything big, they fired h
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That is because there is still an attitude that what you say isn't "etched in stone". When you write it, it is "etched in stone". So with newspapers, they were careful for their own credibility. Someone could always go back and prove you were wrong. Although you can do the same thing with video and even measure context better with video, that attitude doesn't seem to prevail. We as a society seam to expect fallacy in video.
Maybe not etched in stone, but etched in something more permanent - the internet. Somewhere I have a printscreen from November, 2000, proclaiming Al Gore as the next president of the United States. I know it didn't last on ther page for long, but I saved it. I have it somewhere.
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How about the Obamacare decision, where they initially reported it had been struck down?
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If you don't like it, use non-profit news outlets. I do not use for-profit news sources anymore (CNN, etc.).
Sites like /. don't count - they're not really news sites per se, they're more aggregators, and focus on specific niche areas - I'm talking more in the scope of general daily news sources.
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I think part of the problem with reporting is the influence of Cultural Marxism, also known as Political Correctness. This means that journalists don't tie together important background information if it doesn't match the narrative of the angle they decided to take *before they started their story "investigation". What remains after the self-censoring does not make much coherent sense.
For example, looking around the World it appears as if much of the violence is random and much of the US response equall
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There is no easy solution to the self-censoring, and eradication of the wider perspective of any story by the press. However, the Internet has made a huge difference and will only grow in importance. Internet news is bad in that bad reporting and fallacies live forever, but it has the huge advantage that anyone with an interest can fact-check and self-publish articles that can reference all sorts of detailed information.
Agreed, this is why so many other sites are popping up currently. I hope it grows, because what we have in media today called "News" is anything but news.
Unfortunately that means that the huge number of people who only get their news through mainstream media have a very narrow and distorted picture of reality (which is why they voted Obama a second term to further fsck up the US economy [through government overspending on *massive* entitlement programmes the US simply cannot afford] and its Constitutional liberties).
Well stated.
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I think part of the problem with reporting is the influence of Cultural Marxism, also known as Political Correctness.
Anyone who thinks that the mainstream media, especially in the US, are Marxist should either seek psychiatric help, or perhaps just knock off the drugs.
And yes, I know he said "Cultural Marxism" so that he can pretend he meant something other than, er, marxism.
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Perhaps you could watch a historical documentary and learn a little bit about the issue. Cultural Marxism is different from economic or political Marxism. Since it appears you don't understand the difference I hope this video may teach you something:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIdBuK7_g3M [youtube.com]
Please watch the video and then get back to me to show me where I'm wrong. Your statements so far show you to be well indoctrinated by the precepts of the Frankfurt School. It's ok if you want to stay in the Matrix t
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which is why they voted Obama a second term to further fsck up the US economy [through government overspending on *massive* entitlement programmes the US simply cannot afford]
You mean fellating the military-industrial complex, right? We can't afford that. But if we stopped blowing so much money on it, we could afford all the entitlement programs meant for citizens, and then some.
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Yes, it's about money. Then you started with the 9/11 conspiracy shit and I realized that yup you're a conspiracy guy. Guys with radiation detectors onsite? Why in the hell would anyone find that surprising and why in this world would the news report it?
Never mind. I'm not going to feed you, it's just not worth the energy banging my head against the wall with one of you guys.
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As to the article linked: Where do they claim it was a specific backpack? They are saying that Mercenaries at the event wear similar backpacks and are not named as persons of interest. Their questions start with "Why a Mercenary Company is at this event to begin with?" It is very much worth questioning why a Mercenary Company is patrolling Boston's streets instead of, you know.. the Boston Police, Massachusetts State Police, and Sheriff's offices. They are also showing that the bombs could have been pl
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Maybe you are so afraid of cognitive dissonance that you won't bother to look at the questions people are asking, or why they are asking. It's much easier to believe that Uncle Sam and the Media would never ever lie to you. Even though there is ample proof that both happen commonly, you will still vehemently deny that it happens. The fact that people behave that way goes back at least a couple thousand years, and is written in the Allegory of the Cave.
That's not what (Plato's) Allegory of the Cave means at all.
He believed there were eternal truths (e.g. the perfect idea of a circle), which we can only see the distorted reflections of. It's got nothing to do with governments or people lying to each other.
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The Allegory of the Cave is a metaphorical masterpiece. Cognitive dissonance and the human responses to fear and comfort versus facts are both covered.
It's got nothing to do with governments or people lying to each other.
What? The sentences are a question asking "What would happen if a Government keeps it's population enslaved within a cave so that they don't know the outside world exists?" (Translations vary greatly, but most should come very close to that. This comes out in a discussion about how to create a "perfect" Government which requires intense study of currently
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Gah.. s/The\ sentences/The\ first\ sentences/
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It's not a bad hypothetical, but it's not based in fact any more than what you read on conspiracy sites are fact, or what the Government released was fact. There are lots of hypothetical situations, not all of them require the Devil or Dr. Evil. People have been trained to believe that anyone asking questions is a lunatic, and trained further to never question it themselves. Truth is, we don't have a set of facts to deal with and nobody in the Government is willing to open an investigation, even though i
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Oh, one other thing. I own 4 backpacks. ALL of them are black and at least two have skulls on them - stop the presses!
http://www.jinx.com/home.aspx [jinx.com]
Black is probably THE most common color for a backpack....
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Do you have the Mercenary logo on your shirt, hat, and carry a gun at public events as a Mercenary and not an officer of the law? Would you be a bit bothered if you went to the State Fair with the Kids and Blackwater guards were patrolling fully armed? Personally I'd leave, they are not police and something is wrong with that situation. What is more wrong, is someone thinking it's no big deal or normal. Then again, maybe citizen34057 is fully integrated into the police state and trying to get a better h
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.
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Many of them can probably be explained by the tried and true game of telephone. While they didn't blow up other bombs, they blew up suspected bombs. That would account for (1) and (3). The bombs had metal fragments, so a 1st responder was probably like "were these in a trash can?". An innocent mistake, as at least one was in a pressure cooker (2).
I don't know about (4), but they did ask a whole lot of people questions...I'm sure one was "dark skinned".
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Oh wait, there is no such suspect.
http://www.fbi.gov/news/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston/updates-on-investigation-into-multiple-explosions-in-boston
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I wouldn't be too sure about that. There is a lot of backtracking going on over that. "He's going to be deported; oh wait, maybe not". [beforeitsnews.com]
"Now, it seems that the man is completely innocent of any wrongdoing." [gather.com]
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.
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here it is [crooksandliars.com]
Funny as hell, too.
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That's pretty much how gossip works. In their rush to embrace "social media" and incorporate crowdsourcing into their reporting process, the news organizations have lost sight of what distinguished their profession from mere gossip - a bon
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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.
Get on the TV news, say some stuff that sounds legit. Sit back and watch it repeated, then it'll hit the national consciousness and finally be considered "news". And all they have to do is try to track down the original source (you and your news network) but they seldom do. And that's what "news" has come to. Whenever someone heralds the amazing results from the news media, 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
Get resigned to further losses of freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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A lot of "CCTV" cameras are private webcams on people's private property. You're saying I shouldn't be able to put a webcam in my window and make the pictures publicly available? I shouldn't be able to take pictures in public spaces? Why not? Should press be permitted to do so?
And if the bombers get caught, doesn't that indicate that these cameras may be useful after all? I mean, the objection to them used to be that they didn't actually help in catching criminals, but one can revise that belief in light of
transcript or GTFO (Score:5, Insightful)
If I wanted video I'd be on Youtube.
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Seriously, this * 1000. Sorry DICEdot, but this isn't what I come here for.
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If I wanted video I'd be on Youtube.
What did we say overwhelmingly in a recent poll? Something about you should implement what the customer wants, not what the developers want? The world would be a happier place.
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mod parent up.
What's this? a clickbait? a troll? really? You have something to say, just say it. Don't make me click a video. I can read faster than most people can talk, so write it out, or I just don't give a fuck. I might care after I know at least the gist of what you want to say, but "hey, this dude has something interesting to say" isn't getting me to listen. There's a billion people on the Internet who all think they have something important to say.
Can you stop the 24/7 coverage now? (Score:2, Interesting)
Just wondering if all you MSM types can get off your 24/7 cycle and stop going over and over and over this.
My cousin is home from the hospital and her two knee surgeries, and the FBI has the shrapnel from her leg.
K, thanks.
P.S.: Most of my family is NOT WATCHING your coverage. At all.
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.
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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.
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To quote the Ninja Turtles cartoon:
"Dog bites man? that's not news, Man Bites dog, that's news!"
That was around a long time before the Ninja Turtles ever hatched. As in, the late Nineteenth, early Twentieth century.
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Yesterday, the local (as in, this town) news website reported a death from a road traffic incident as the top news story.
That death wasn't reported on the national news, nor was it international news. Why not? Because several people probably died in the same manner that day nationally, and hundreds globally.
So why did it make the local news? Because it was relevant to the locality!
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American news companies broadcasting primarily on American channels SHOULD give higher precedence to US news. Because people care most about what's going on in their own country. There is nothing wrong with that.
So it took about 5 minutes to give all of the known information play it at the top of the hour and then tell some more news. just because it happened here did not mean they needed to stop all other reporting
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!
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The United States already killed 10 times the number of Afghans at a wedding early that day. But we don't hear about that, because no one cares about the US bombing civilians whose only crime was attending a wedding.
No they didn't. Somebody went through a lot of trouble to spread a reprint of a 2002 article.
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Hope your cousin makes full recovery and does so soon.
Were you previously Will in Seattle around here?
Fact Checking and Bias (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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And that "competition" is complete bunk. People don't care who has a story first. They go to their usual outlets, and the stories are reported there whenever the info reaches them. The reason they go to the sites or news stations/programs they do is because they prefer the coverage or style of reporting that's going on there.
No info + 24/hr news cycle = failure (Score:3)
Then, they have hours of airtime to fill. So they use unknown "fact" combined with stupid pundits to just fill airtime. It is a bunch of shit in summation.
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It's the evolution of news. All the media has taken the blogger threat seriously - thinking that they have to compete against Joe Schmoe with a blog reporting on news, and being able to do it quicker means catching up on
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The problem is that they haven't taken the blogger threat seriously. They've knee-jerked. There's a difference. A serious response to the blogger threat would involve using bloggers as a source of tips, and seeking confirmation before they actually report things, or at the very least, making it clear which reports are unconfirmed.
Instead, their response has been to report faster and less accurately. Thus, ironically, the very actions they took in response to the blogger threat have eliminated the sole
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.
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Paraphrasing an expert interviewed the day after (Score:2)
People on the inside are giving out information they don't have to people on the outside who don't verify it. Both are primarily motivated by trying to make a name for themselves.
But even if (Score:2)
And prosthetics may have gotten better, but I know DARPA is also working on some regenerative goodies. In fact there is at least one soldier walking around today who re-grew his own thigh muscle due to a powder of sorts that helped the tissue re-grow as opposed to forming scar tissue. It's fascinating stuff. And I'd much prefer regenerative versus prosthesis.
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Says who? The Barbary wars would disagree.. as would the war on drugs, war on poverty, war on homelessness, etc.
I think the FBI would like to talk to you... as you obviously have more information that is publically known. If it is that simple... great, but do not treat a lack of claim of credit as an assurance that this was not a foreign run operation.
Why don't we wait to see what the facts say
Cable news not what it was supposed to be (Score:3)
Everyone thought dedicated news channels would mean dedicated new coverage. These for-profit news channels are trying to maximize their news coverage dollar and that usually means making the most out of the least. Late last night I watched a sheriff interviewed who was extremely careful not to give out even estimates of numbers. He was very disciplined and never speculated; at the most saying it could have been a criminal act or it could have been an industrial accident.
When a reporter was later asked to summarize his comments, she emphasis (paraphrasing) "he said it *could* have been a criminal act. That's an interesting choice of words." So even when there's no news, that gets turned into something!
Look at the Jodi Arias trial that's been featured on HLN for weeks now. An open-and-shut murder tiral about a pretty girl with some irrelevant sordid sexual details has become their primary focus and they're milking it for every last graphic sexual and violent detail.
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The OJ Simpson coverage laid the groundwork for the kind of breathless "journalism" we see today. Frankly I don't watch TV news any more. It's nauseating.
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I quit watching TV in 1983 in the UK because even then it was apparent that everything on it was heading towards being packaged as limp light entertainment. 24 Hour news took the news all the way. I feel sorry for my parents who still watch it and are depressed because they think civilization is falling apart. There is lots more going on in the world than rapes of 11 year olds or measles outbreaks or bombs at Marathons, a million refugees from Syria or two or three habitable planets being found come to mind
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Even older adages are: "Ignorance is bliss." and "Knowledge is power."
If only we had that choice. Unfortunately we don't get actual knowledge in the news. Which, as you say, leaves only the 1st option as a viable alternative.
But maybe (tinfoil hat here) that is intentional. Less knowledge to the plebs, means less power to the plebs.
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But TV/internet news is good for immediacy, I just don't see why you feel your parents are be
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The OJ Simpson coverage laid the groundwork for the kind of breathless "journalism" we see today.
I think you nailed it.
Nothing we are doing is going to change this (Score:1)
People have been complaining about CNN and 24hr news since it went on air. Did it help? No, because you still tune in and they get paid. Stop watching it, or it will stay around.
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.
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I take the news in small doses. To be honest the only coverage of the boston marathon bombings I have read came from Slashdot and the few links that were posted. When the Sandy Hook shootings happened I also only skimmed a few slashdot articles and links.
I firmly believe the 24 hour news coverage and other non stop forms of reporting of major incidents are more harmful to the public than the incidents themselves. What I mean by harmful is the stress it induces in everyday people who are what I like to call
Looks like (Score:1, Funny)
Too much coverage (Score:2)
We all act as if those stupid ignorant media people are ridiculous, but they are just doing what every one of us does. We speculate, we come up with little stories and runors. Here you have someone talking to a clip of the carnage, that is compiled from 20 or so pieces, being shown over and over again for 30 minutes, and they have to say something. So you get stupid stuff being said. Just like w
News Coverage = Animated GIF (Score:3)
Most of the "news coverage" right at the start could have been replaced by a 5 second looping animated GIF.
Worse yet, a few hours later some of the stations around here were showing repeating footage clips of people running and screaming with no obvious indication it was recorded earlier to try and make it seem like it was still happening.
Huge problem with media (Score:3)
The most pressing point is not about Boston and may have nothing to do with Al Quiida at all. The real problem is frequency of incidents.
We are seeing more and more people or groups acting out in violent ways. The media and politicians can make remarks all day long but the public is
missing the point. Here we have several bombs made from pressure cookers. About one week back we had some nut attack 14 people with some sort of box cutter or utility knife. In the mean time we have had organized killings of people in public jobs such as prison wardens. Then we have the recurring loonies who have urges to shoot school kids or even college kids. There are so many incidents it is hard to keep track of them. I do not believe it is bad diet or lead in the drinking water. I think we simply have a population under too much pressure and people are acting out. Yet our politicians will not address the real problems. For example many in congress would like more background checks on gun purchases. They are smart enough to give lip service to claim advancing the mental health care system but that is a huge lie. America has never funded mental health and is not about to provide decent funding for mental health. And it gets even worse. The fertilizer plant explosion in Texas may well be a worse problem than the Boston incident. The company involved has already admitted that they failed to have mandatory fire and incident equipment in place. In a very real way that company may well have been far more outrageous than the nut that placed the bombs in Boston. Yet media won't jump on it at all. I can also tell you that Ft. Lauderdale had a fertilizer plant burn a few decades ago and the responding firemen came down with cancer almost universally. Apparently the gasses expelled in a fertilizer plant fire tend to be very, very lethal in the long term. Where is the media on this? Frankly American news media is really in the crapper these days.
He wrote for eWeek... (Score:2)
.
Talk about the irony of narcissism.
When there is no news make up some (Score:2)
Posts about stuff that doesn't belong on slashdot. (Score:2)
This was a great interview. Thank you Slashdot for not being tunnel visioned into only tech.
See also News Wipe (Score:2)
Charlie Brooker did a longer series (NewsWipe) on the problems of reporting in the 24h rolling news world and the overall decline of TV news journalism over the years; check them out on YouTube.
a scene out of Fahrenheit 451 (Score:2)
I wonder how the newest media, social media,
AT the Farmont Plaza Hotel (Score:2)
I noticed the Media kept saying the explosions where AT the Farmont Plaza Hotel for several hours afterwards. When even a cursory comparing of the many photos to Google maps showed they were in fact several hundred meters away.
Re: (Score:1)
Wtf is an EMT?
"E"mergency "M"edical "T"echnician.
IOW ("I"n "O"ther "W"ords), the medical person that works from an ambulance.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously? Emergency medical technician, aka paramedic. The guy in the ambulance who does the cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, nobody can know all the acronyms from every field.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, nobody can know all the acronyms from every field.
I've found http://www.acronymfinder.com/ [acronymfinder.com] to be helpful. Results are are categorized by field.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously? Emergency medical technician, aka paramedic. The guy in the ambulance who does the cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
Yes, but everyone knows what "paramedic" means, and I've never heard of an "EMT" before. Leave jargon to those who use it professionally, and if you must introduce some new acronym, please explain it first.
Re: (Score:2)
Minor nitpicking here, but this is the internet... An EMT is not the same as a Paramedic
If you hadn't, I'd have. :-)
I would describe it a bit differently though. Essentially, there are four levels of EMT: EMT Basic, EMT Intermediate, EMT Advanced, and Paramedic. That is, all paramedics are EMTs but not vice versa.
A couple times I've considered geting EMT-basic certification and volunteering. I never have, but I did look into the training requirements. An EMT Basic course will usually be one semester; I thin
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is bad when it comes to acronyms and assuming everone speaks the same language (figuratively and literally).
In this case, EMT is Emergency Medical Technician. They're often the people who arrive in ambulances. The old US TV show, Emergency! is centered around EMTs, about the same time that EMTs first started to exist in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_medical_technician [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on how you define 'organized'... and sometimes they do not happen because we get lucky and stop them ahead of time (see Fort Dix six)
Nidal Malik Hasan may have pulled the trigger on his own, but was later discovered to be in communication and plotting with Al-Awlaki.
Oh right... the Obama administration refuses to call that a terrorist attack... only 'work place violence'.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wasn'