Media: Playing Up Terror Too Much?

Well, this week has been a doosie! And the media has been right there to help us through it. Well...maybe the media didn't exactly help us through it, but it was there.

The other day CNN made a huge "exclusive" announcement that there had been an arrest made in the Boston bombings. An hour later, they announced that the FBI had just released a statement saying that they would appreciate it if the media would vet their sources before releasing statements, because there had not been an arrest made. I was on Twitter and suddenly there was a flurry of activity of people trashing CNN's horrible reporting!

1. ChickOpinion ‏@ChickOpinion17 Apr

   So now, #CNN says possibly definitely not yes maybe there hasn't been an arrest or not. Ha. #breakingnews stories are irritating.

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   11:45 AM - 17 Apr 13 from Ohio, US · Details

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   Andrew Kaczynski ‏@BuzzFeedAndrew17 Apr

   RT @intelwire: My sources are telling me the bomber definitely has skin.

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   11:47 AM - 17 Apr 13 · Details

1. ChickOpinion ‏@ChickOpinion17 Apr

   I think #CNN should pluck daisy petals: "There has been an arrest, there has been an arrest not..." #broadcastnewsfail #CNNReporting

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   11:52 AM - 17 Apr 13 from Ohio, US · Details

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   Scott Conroy ‏@RealClearScott17 Apr

   Where was Lennay Kekua on Monday afternoon?

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   11:58 AM - 17 Apr 13 · Details

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   Armchair Quarterback ‏@Armchair_QBs17 Apr

   #CNN reports the #Jets are Superbowl favorites.

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   12:27 PM - 17 Apr 13 · Details

I understand that reporting on a "breaking news" story is complicated because you're always getting new information. But, since the CNN fiasco on Wednesday, all reporters on all networks have been saying things like, "We don't want to give you false information, so we won't give you specifics until we check the facts again." Why didn't they do that in the first place?

Not only has the media been rushing information, they haven't exactly been comforting during this time of unsettlement. I know that it's not media's job to sugarcoat everything, but I don't like feeling like I've just gone into an action movie when I turn on the news. Here are some of the headlines that the usually laid-back ABC has used this week:

On Monday night, the title "Terror at the Boston Marathon" was said in one of those movie announcer voices. It was so unsettling! I felt like they were drawing a little bit of the wrong kind of feelings to the story. It was not a feeling of tragedy; it was like an action movie.

Yesterday morning and this morning the GMA headlines were also read like movie titles. It felt incredibly creepy. Yes, the headlines are accurate, but do they evoke the right kind of feelings that tragedies like these should evoke in people?

Both the President of the U.S. and the Governor of Massachusetts spoke yesterday about pulling together as a country and a community to get through this crisis (as well as, of course, the crisis in Texas). The media is not making me feel the same way the president and governor did yesterday. I do not feel reassured with "TERROR" in all-caps. Sure, it's accurate, but the media also has the opportunity and responsibility to decide how they are going to make the public feel. I don't like feeling on edge all the time, and I feel like that's where the media is taking us.

So, kudos to the reporters and anchors who have stayed strong through all of this. Thank you for being (mostly) reliable and working through the nights to keep us up to date on everything that's going on. To the public, I think we need to remember the people who were killed in the bombings and the officer who was killed last night in the shootout in Boston, as well as the people who were killed in Texas. We need to make sure that we keep this in perspective.

Stay safe. Stay strong.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Where Are the Superheroes?

I had a dream last night: there was fire coming out of all the buildings in the apartment complex I live in. The fire trucks started coming up to the buildings, but instead of fire fighters getting out, superheroes did. They flew and climbed and jumped their ways to the windows and saved all the people in the fiery buildings. Then, without a word, they left. As they left, the fire fighters were getting out of the fire trucks, rubbing their eyes like they'd been asleep, and they started putting out the fires. Then I woke up.

When I turned on my phone, the first alert I got was from CNN about the explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas. I watched the 5:30am press conference on it. Then I watched the news. Authorities are looking for two people of interest from the Boston bombing. The Senate voted down a bill that would keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It literally felt like everything in the world was going wrong (To be fair, it was also pre-coffee, so everything always feels like it's going wrong that early!). 

The Avengers

Then I remembered my dream. Superheroes. In the last week, we could have used some. If we could have had Iron Man (with his government military intelligence), Batman (with his justice-first attitude), or any of the X-Men (with their...well, everything), it would have helped so much! 

I started looking around at the history of superheroes and found something interesting: the rise and fall of superhero popularity is directly related to what's happening in our country at the time. Superman was the first superhero, written in 1933 and finally published in 1938. What was going on in the 1930s? The Great Depression. Captain America and Batman enjoyed wide success in the early 1940s, as World War II raged on. Comics lost public interest during the late 1940s and 1950s, because America was safe and booming. The Cold War spanned a great part of the 1960s; enter The Avengers and the X-Men, along with a rekindling of Batman, Superman, and Captain America. From the 1970s through the 1990s, superheroes weren't as popular as they had been during the 1960s. But then, the early 2000s saw a huge rise in popularity--and it hasn't stopped. Since the 9/11 attack we have been in war, depression, and at-home party rifts. 

There's another Iron Man movie coming out this summer. I went to the in-theater Batman movie marathon last summer. The Avengers movie that came out last year was amazing. After the latest X-Men movie, I went back and watched some of the previous ones that I hadn't seen. And I'm not alone. 

I am of a generation that grew up knowing that superhero characters existed, but we didn't grow up loving superheroes. And now we do. Maybe it's silly and naive, but I love the idea of a group of people who are brilliant and want justice coming to "our" rescue! And there's some part of me that thinks we need it. 

Batman

Even though we aren't in a war overseas (oh, wait--we are in wars overseas; people just don't pay attention to them anymore...topic for another day), we need to look to our leaders right now and come together to get through all of this. We have not come together as a country for a cause since World War II. Back then, people didn't mind giving up things in their every day life up for a national cause. Now, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan barely ever even make headlines. I have a friend who is about to be deployed and I feel like people aren't even going to pay attention to him or care that he's over there. Right now it feels like at home people care more about party lines and personal gain than true peace and justice. What if every day we heard about the wars and everyone was expected to tighten their belts a little bit to support our troops and our government? Maybe then we wouldn't need superheroes, we would just want them. 

X-Men

I think the metaphor of superheroes is something that's played out every day and something we need to pay attention to more. The first responders in the Boston bombings are superheroes. The fire fighters and EMS workers who were killed and injured in West, Texas are superheroes. The persevering parents and siblings of kids who were murdered at Sandy Hook are superheroes. People who try to protect and save other people are everyday superheroes. And we do need them.

It might sound stupid and child-like, but today, be a superhero. Figure out a way that you can help someone and not ask anything in return. Run toward the problems and help fix instead of running away and assuming that someone else will fix the problems. Save a life, show strength, and give hope.

Superman

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Boston: Blossoming from Disaster

This morning I woke up and looked out on a rainy grey morning. But then I realized that it was less grey than usual. Seemingly overnight, little green leaves have appeared on every tree and bush, brushing the landscape with a hope of sorts: the promise of spring.

And there was one tree off in the distance with white flowers on it. It reminded me that above everything else, we can rise and blossom. And we must.

Today I am not concerned about sharing strong opinions. I am exhausted from seeing the same footage from Boston and thinking about how the victims' lives have changed forever. I know that it is perhaps rude of me to say that I'm tired since I'm not there, but I don't think I'm the only one to have this sentiment. We need to stop seeing photos of carnage and continue grieving so that we, as a country, can start healing.

So, today is about remembering the victims of the Boston bombings and working together to move forward. Here's a great USA Today article with some ways we can help Boston recover.

Let's stick together. Let's stay strong.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Boston

The bombings at the Boston Marathon yesterday were horrific. I never thought I'd see footage like that in my entire life. The images coming out of Boston looked like they were from a war zone. I felt so sad seeing something so joyful turn into an afternoon of pain and suffering.

Twitter was swamped with people sending thoughts and prayers to Boston. "#PrayForBoston" and "#BostonMarathon" were trending within minutes. Twitter was also swamped with people starting to play the blame game. Muslims were upset because "#Muslims" was on the national trend list. A tweet that I saw said, "Did #WhiteBoy trend when Lanza was caught in December?" Another one read, "Anyone who thinks that Muslims are responsible for this obviously forget McVeigh. #shame #RememberOKC."

One of the people I follow on Twitter, an army wife from Colorado Springs, said that she was tired of people blaming "her American people" for the bombing and she wanted an apology from ABC, NBC, and CBS. I asked her what she meant (I'd been watching all of those, as well as FOX, to try to get all the information) because I didn't understand. She said that those three networks had already said it was the "conservative right" that was to blame. I disagreed with this, seeing as I had been watching those for the last hour and had heard nothing of the sort, but I thought her reaction was a perfect example of the way people react in the wake of tragedies like this: they don't want it to be one of "their" people and they take everything they hear and twist it to fit what they need to hear at that time. It's easier to blame some other group, some other skin color, some other country. I don't fault this woman for her initial reaction; it was a horrible day and our gut reactions are not always the most reasonable. I wrote back to her saying that I hope it's not someone identified with a particular party, too.

Maksim Chmerkovskiy, a professional dancer on the hit TV show "Dancing with the Stars," tweeted, "Hard to dance on [a] day like today, but I hope we'll show whomever is responsible for #bostonbombing that we're stronger and unaffected!" I really do think that the show must go on and it's important that we get together and stay strong. But unaffected? No. We must allow ourselves to be affected by this event to ensure that we do come out the other side stronger.

So. I am not a fan of blaming people. I know that other people are. Some of the most popular people to blame for the Boston bombings have been President Obama, Muslims in general, and terrorists. But is it the right time? I feel like I did after the tragedy at Sandy Hook: is right now the appropriate time to talk about what our government "should have" done? While I understand that we will absolutely need to discuss this, are the first 24 hours the right time?

For now, let's hug our relatives, help out strangers, and pray for the victims of the bombings in Boston. If we allow ourselves to start blaming each other and arguing about who the "mastermind" behind all of this was, it doesn't matter who the person who did this is: they have already won. If we allow them to bomb our cities, turn us against each other, and break our collective resolve, they win.

We cannot let them win. We must find the person who did this and bring them to justice. And we must work together.

Stay safe. Stay strong.

"Be the change you wish to be in the world." --Gandhi