800 Words on the Boston Bombing Coverage

My TV set stayed off during the coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing that happened a week ago on April 15, 2013, and the subsequent manhunt for the two suspects that happened on Friday. I kept up by checking the internet for updates, not only on the bombing story but on the emphasis of the coverage. It was difficult not to pay attention to what was going on because it was practically all that anyone in the U.S. was talking about last week. However, this time it felt like all the worst case scenarios about the 24 hour news cycle and the danger of trusting what you read on the internet came true, one after the other.

During the days between the bombing and the manhunt, many news outlets were remarkably self-conscious about the potential harm of speculating on the identities of the bombers and their motives. That didn't stop anyone from speculating, however. There was plenty of on-air chatter about possible ethnicities, nationalities, religions, political stances, and more. The bombers were already being politicized long before they were identified, their potential impact on gun-control legislation, immigration reform, drone warfare, and other hot button issues getting plenty of attention. With so much interest in the event and so little information, it was inevitable that rumors would run rampant, and that the smallest details would be blown out of proportion. Jon Stewart has a good rundown of the worst offenders on "The Daily Show" last week.

I was glad that there seemed to be much more awareness of various groups trying to make the bombings fit certain narratives. There was a lot of pre-emptive defense of Muslims and the Saudi national who had been identified as a witness. Many people were being called out for racial profiling and jumping to conclusions. As quickly as the crackpots came out of the woodwork, they were confronted and scolded just as quickly. For at least the first few days of the news coverage, there was a real attempt to focus on the victims, the first responders, and relief efforts. Disasters tend to bring out the best in many people, and for a while that provided enough material to fill the airwaves and the newspaper columns. My favorite piece came trom the New Yorker: Why Boston's Hospitals Were Ready. However, all the good intentions and the emphasis on responsible reporting didn't last. Inevitably, attention shifted to the investigation, and things fell apart quickly.

CNN and many other news outlets reported that an arrest had been made on Wednesday afternoon, which had to be retracted when the Boston police denied that they had anyone in custody. Then on Thursday the New York Post ran the infamous "Bag Men" cover, that seemed to point to two "dark-skinned" individuals, neither of whom turned out to have anything to do with the bombings and weren't particularly dark-skinned either. The erroneous reports turned into news stories themselves, and many used them as an excuse to slam traditional media outlets. Meanwhile, internet-based outlets were hardly doing much better. Would-be sleuths on social media sites were trying to piece together evidence from photos of the bombings that had been released online. By all accounts their actions were mostly harmful, leading to several false IDs, and incidents of harassment and vigilantism. After the conclusion of the manhunt, it was revealed that the FBI was spurred to release the photos of the Tsarnaev brothers in part as an effort to mitigate the damage being done by these amateurs.

Now, in the aftermath, the mainstream media is blaming the internet, the internet is blaming the mainstream media, and I'm left feeling exasperated with both sides. After all that talk about how we should wait for information to be confirmed and avoid turning into an unthinking mob, that's exactly what ended up happening. At least this time around there's a little more introspection going on, and more discussion of the problems that the coverage revealed. Oddly, the mainstream media and the internet ended up checking and balancing each other to some extent, and maybe that's how it should be. Since both approaches have proven to be problematic, at least we can be glad that we're not stuck with one or the other exclusively.

And so we've completed another cycle of tragedy and terror and retribution in the American media. The suspect has been apprehended, the heroes have been cheered, and it was all very exciting and, though we won't readily admit it to ourselves, we were all very entertained. Sadly, for the bulk of the time, the public was kept pretty badly informed by a sensationalist media that was desperate to say something, anything, to keep our attention, and the collective speculation of the internet hordes that reflected our worst impulses to find someone to blame as quickly as possible.
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