Major Media's Fine Job Of Confusing Everyone About Boston Suspects

from the facts-of-the-matter dept

The death of journalism and fact-checking has long been the mantra of the major media in response to so-called internet journalism (which should just be called journalism, by the way). This, despite the fails of major media and the wins by journalistic websites, reveals a sort of paternal arrogance on the part of the still-major players in traditional reporting. It's always interesting when the roles are massively reversed, which was on full display in the Boston Marathon bombing aftermath.

Deadspin notes, with a hysterically cut up video montage, the full failure of major media reporting on possible suspects in the aftermath.

We thought we'd condense today's mess of media reporting into something easily consumable for the crowd that may have been working and thus wasn't privy to the disaster taking place on television airwaves. Here, then, are your trusted news sources reporting, misreporting, backtracking, and scapegoating their way through the day.

You have to see the video for yourself, which I frustratingly can't seem to find an embed for, to have the magnitude of mistakes and misreporting fully hit home. In a matter of hours, major news sources reported that a suspect was about to be arrested, had been arrested, was of brown-skin, white-skin, was taken by U.S. Marshals, then wasn't arrested, then was re-arrested and was on his way to the courthouse, was then again un-arrested, culminating with the reporting that no suspect was even known by name, let alone arrested. In fact, there are times when the supposed fact-checking media can go even further and splash the pictures of people they claim are suspects on their front page, who definitely are not, for no apparent reason beyond that which seems to be they are brown-skinned. It's enough to take one's breath away.

Now, it should be noted that this isn't to suggest that news sources on the internet aren't capable of misreporting as well. Media, in general, is subject to a drive to draw attention by having the latest information, which often results in a rush to report what hasn't been verified. But that is a characteristic of media, not traditional media or internet media. Just media. On the other hand, if you want the most extensive available investigation into the matter, your best choice isn't the television or the papers, but Reddit, which has organized their own crowd-sourced investigation. That's the power of the internet.