Look Who's Talking

Like everyone else in Boston yesterday afternoon, I was glued to my television trying to get updates on the attack on the Boston Marathon. I found myself bouncing from channel to channel and even though I don't know what I was looking for them to tell me (and it was not like there was anything I could hear which would have put my mind at ease) I just could not turn the TV off. I have to say, while the local channels were doing a fairly good job of letting us know what was going on, the national press was struggling. In many ways that makes sense because the local guys had a distinct home-field advantage of knowing the area well, which meant they could get down to the nuts and the bolts of the issues - which streets and businesses were closed, which routes people could take to get home once the T was shut down, where people could give blood if they wanted and how they could contact love ones if they hadn't been able to get a hold of them yet. Meanwhile, the national press certainly couldn't do that, because why would someone in Montana care that the Boylston was closed? Thus they were left repeating the same information (which wasn't much) every few minutes. This resulted in them reverting back to what most 24-hour cable news networks do to fill time anyway - they started making crap up.

I really could not count the number of times I heard someone say last night, "This report is unconfirmed." Well then, by definition that makes it not news, but conjecture and speculation which is not what people who claim to be journalists should be spouting in a moment like that. When a city is as on edge as Boston was at that moment, what we needed was straight facts - not hearing reporters who are allegedly professionals saying things about numbers of recovered, undetonated devices, possible suspects in custody and the potential of another attack on the other side of the city, none of which turned out to be true the next day. Not only does it waste energy running these leads downs it draws attention from what is really important. See, what the national guys don't know is that Bostonians are stoic. We want to know what is really going on so we can decide how we want to deal with it, not what could maybe, possibly, probably not happening in the name of sensationalism. At that moment they were acting like that person in your office who sees two people go out to lunch and starts telling everyone they are having an affair. These so-called journalists should be better than that.

I guess this issue has become more pronounced with the popularity of social media, because it just shows you how quickly people are still willing to believe anything they hear or see. For example, as soon as the news reported that one of the victims yesterday was an 8-year old, a picture started to circulate of a little girl wearing a runner's number and people were claiming she was the victim. Of course, the actual child killed was an 8 year-old boy, but the damage to some other family who had friends recognize this girl and call them in a panic was already done. It was the same with the other story of the runner who was allegedly killed while her boyfriend waited at the finish line with an engagement ring (also false). Last count saw that story had several thousand re-Tweets. This incident was sad enough, we don't need to go around dramatically embellishing it to try and make it worse. Honestly, I'm not sure who are the worse people in this scenario - the people who are making up these bold-face lies or the people who run with them without doing any checking of their validity. I'm leaning towards the lie-spreaders because they are trying to gain something (usually attention) by passing these things along, whereas I'm not sure what the people who make up these stories actually gain, other than some sick sense of satisfaction about how gullible certain people are.

It just drives me crazy how everyone has to play detective and talk about what 'sources' are saying, when the reality is their source is some guy at the liquor store whose second cousin knows a cop who had the day off but knows guys who were working a detail in Copley. I understand that there are only so many ways to say there is no new information, fill time between press conferences and interview people near the blast who all have the same story. I also sympathize because all people want in that moment is information and when you are the only person with a camera a microphone you feel compelled to provide them with something. Thus, the second anyone appears with even a shred of new information it gets them immediate attention. However, it doesn't mean that attention has to be amplified because false information does more harm than good. Hopefully in addition to the improved security measures which I am sure will be in place by next year's Marathon (again, showing how out-of-touch the national reporters are, I heard one person say the race will totally change next year. No, it won't because, in the words of Will Hunting, "Fuck you, that's why."), we will take yesterday's confusion and remember the golden rule that if you don't have anything productive to add to a situation, sometimes it's best to just keep quiet.