Some may call it being nosy. I prefer inquisitive and curious. It stated at an early age. Whenever I heard a siren near my house, I wanted to find it and see what was happening. The local shopping center caught on fire when I was in elementary school, and I remember begging my mom to come with me to go watch the scene unfolding. To be fair, it was well within walking distance from my house. Just sayin'.
My earliest memory of news junkie-ness was the Challenger disaster. I was in middle school and had a vague personal connection to one of the astronauts, Judy Resnick. She was my dentist's niece and he always told me about her during my visits. I remember not wanting my mom to turn off the news and reading the newspaper every day for a week.
In high school, I was fortunate enough to be a part of an award-winning, student-produced TV news show broadcast on a local cable access station . It was then when I realized, while I loved being able to bring the information to viewers, I wasn't terribly sure I could be as "tenacious" as I needed to be to dig into people to get the scoop. But I never lost the love for the story.
The news game changed in college. Cable news offered wall-to-wall coverage.
OJ.
Oklahoma City.
Then, 9/11.
In the past few weeks, two riveting stories have grabbed the world; one several hundred miles away, the Boston Marathon bombings, and one in my own backyard, The Miracle in Cleveland. And the ultimate game-changer, social media, completely altered the news gathering, news reporting and news consumption universe during these two events. The ability to watch a man live tweet the shootout between police and the bombing suspects was indescribable. But the flip-side of that unprecedented access was the ugly side - the rush to be the first to report something. It resulted in gross indiscretions and misinformation by traditional TV media, wild accusations with no consequences by "citizen journalists" and sensationalism by everyone at its "finest".
During these two events, I followed my Twitter feed while simultaneously watching cable and local news outlets. Twitter was astonishing to me for the Boston Bombing coverage. I learned about the Boston Bombings from my Twitter feed on the way home from the zoo with the kids. I scrolled and scrolled every time I stopped at a red light. That was around 2:45 pm that Monday. When I arrived home 15 minutes later, the cable news networks were just starting to pick up broadcasts, and I had yet to receive any breaking news "alerts" from my phone which are tied to my CNN and MSNBC apps. Even though the TV coverage was slow to catch up to Twitter, I didn't turn off the TV and computer until well into the early morning hours. On the Thursday evening of the release of the suspect pics, I crawled into bed a little before 11:00 pm because it seemed new developments had stagnated. I checked my Twitter feed one last time. Various people I follow started RTing reports of the shooting at MIT. I rolled over to my husband and told him what was going on. He replied something to the effect of it's gotta be related to the bombings. In my head, That's exactly what I'm thinking. Too coincidental to NOT be. On went the TV to accompany my Twitter feed. All initial reports were very careful to point out that there was NO apparent link of the MIT shooting, a reported car-jacking and robbery of a convenience store to the bombings. It was one the first times throughout the endless reporting, the cable newsrooms (especially CNN) were finally showing restraint. Surely it was tied to the criticism of the erroneous reports from a day earlier, spearheaded by CNN, that a bombing suspect had been arrested. The over-correction was NOTICEABLE. But I would bet, every producer on hand was chomping at the bit to run with the almost common sense idea that these things HAD to be related. I proceeded to spend the entire night (like up until 5 AM, when I just couldn't keep my eyes open anymore) glued to my phone and TV as the events unfolded; tweeting with a friend in Arizona about what we were witnessing. Once a direct link between the events was established, Twitter and cable news let go of the all restraint shown earlier, and the wild accusations began flying quicker than the bullets on Laurel Street .
The suspects are caught....
No, they're dead.....
No, they're on the run......
Yes, one is dead.....
No, one's being arrested, NAKED!
Then the craziest - a report identifying one of the bombers as the missing Brown University student, Sunil Tripathi.
Then watching the cable news reporters in Watertown on Friday was a circus in itself. Reporting while speculating on why a neighborhood dog is barking, why police cars are backing up....the absurdity went on and on for hours. And yet, I still watched, afraid I would miss something. But my viewing was now with a measured eye.
The Miracle in Cleveland, the event that hit my home, didn't require me to use social media to feel connected to the story. It was happening a little over 10 miles from my house. I found myself getting more and more frustrated with the barrage of misinformation, wild reports and accusations being bantered about through the media, both social and traditional. I felt especially defensive regarding the scrutiny being placed on the Cleveland Police due to the eye-witness reports coming from "neighbors" claiming to witness horrific things going on (naked women being lead around on leashes in the backyard by men, seeing naked women chained to a wall in the attic, etc.) which, according to their accounts, resulted in minimal police contact or no police attention at all. I found these reports suspect from the beginning, from an almost common sense standpoint. I thought to myself, if someone were to call police reporting these things, I'm fairly certain the reports would illicit more than a cursory police visit. Also troubling to me was that all the immediate neighbors, who would have the best advantage in witnessing something, SUSPECTED NOTHING. I watched four separate interviews with the girls who claimed to have witnessed the kidnapper in the backyard with one of the women while she was naked. In their first interviews, they didn't show their faces and claimed that they called police, who never responded. By the time they made it to primetime Piers Morgan, being interviewed with their mom, the story had changed. And when asked directly by Piers, the girls said they never called police. And when Piers asked their mom if the girls told her, she said they told her hours after it had happened and she figured it was too late to call police by then. Hmmm. In too deep with the story by then? I wondered why would a man, who had obviously gone to excruciating lengths to keep these women secret, would walk one of them in the backyard NAKED for all of the neighborhood to see?!?! I wonder if anyone brought up these points in an editorial meeting on CNN? Has it come to this - the "reputable" media, who is so hungry to be the first to have reported the "smoking gun" detail, will take the "15 minutes of fame people" who are so desperate to be a part of the story, as fact and run with it? And even though the FBI/Cleveland Police held a news conference, in which they stated the GIRLS told them they were allowed out of the house on only a few occasions, while fully clothed in disguises, to go to the garage for a short period of time; CNN is still trying to push these neighbor reports as credible even during interviews as late as Friday afternoon. I listened to lawyer talking-heads squawk endlessly on why murder charges weren't levied against the kidnapper during his arraignment. DUH! Even I know they can bring further charges against him at a later date. How's that law degree working out for ya? OY!
When does common sense sink in in a newsroom setting? When does the producer or editor finally decide that something is just not credible enough anymore and let it go? I saw evidence of restraint and excellence in reporting with Pete Williams and The Boston Globe during the Boston Bombings. They seemed old school. I guess I'm still old school; I'd rather take the truth with time, than sensationalism instantly.
I've learned my lesson. But I won't be giving up on Twitter altogether, just streamlining my credible follows :)
And as much as I LOVE Anderson Cooper - I can no longer take CNN seriously.
