In my high school days, I wanted to be a journalist. That was ten years ago, before the Internet became the most reliable source for breaking news. The 24-hour news networks already overpowered written print, but Twitter and the endless bombardment of real-time updates were in their infancy. Still, I saw a noble aspect of being the person who delivered accurate, well-researched stories on current events. I entertained fantasies that I might be the next Bernstein or Murrow, extracting well-constructed truths to inform and provoke the thoughts of the public. The Internet largely killed that dream as the journalism world turn its back solid stories to focus on tabloid-shaming scoops and privacy-invading details.
Yesterday, a friend and I attended the 11am showing of The Hobbit. At ten, we stopped at a McDonald's for breakfast. The flat screen televisions inside were tuned to CNN, and the network's in-depth coverage of the Newton, Connecticut school shooting was in full swing. The ticker offered few details about the number of victims, but journalists were stationed at the school, killing time until the police offered more information.
After the film, we stopped at an IHOP for lunch. I was beyond surprised to find a flat screen television in the bathroom, also tuned to CNN. While my friend and I visited Middle Earth, details of the shooting infiltrated the public. The death count was up to twenty-six, but the identity of the killer had not been announced.
I don't have cable or a television, so I raced home to check the Internet for more details. Google News listed 8,000 articles on the shooting. I opened several stories published by reputed news sources and scoured each one for the facts. USA Today boasted a photo-timeline, which largely proved to be inaccurate according to the details I later read. It took 45 minutes to sift through the mountain of updates, redactions and misinformation compiled by the New York Times, the LA Times and the Washington Post.
On Tumblr, the Charlie Brooker video, featuring a forensic psychiatrist who detailed how shootings should be reported, made the rounds. Journalist/blogger Natasha Vargas Cooper wrote a response to the video posts. She claimed the psychiatrist's rules infringed on the public's rights to information.
While I appreciate her sentiment on the freedoms of the press, I completely disagree with her and believe she missed the entire point of the video. Brooker and the psychiatrist never claimed the press should be denied the right to provide concrete details such as the killer's name, the body count, or the circumstances surrounding the event. Their beef lies with the media's tendency to bombard the public with 24-hour coverage of an incident; coverage that nominally relies on sensationalized headlines, subjective opinions and invasion of privacy for the people involved.
It is precisely why I dropped the notion that I could ever become a respectable journalist with the freedom to produce well-researched material. We no longer inhabit a world where people care about actual facts. We crave the frenzy and endless submersion that news outlets now supply.
In the case of the Newton shooting, the media wrongly identified the shooter and released his brother's name. Now, in addition to the pain and confusion caused by the death of his mother and brother, Ryan Lanza must deal with being falsely accused of committing a massacre. Lanza's father learned the details of the shooting from a reporter who showed up outside his home. Several outlets reported that the shooter, Adam Lanza, killed his father and brother at their residence before driving to the school. Some reported that his mother's body was found at the residence. The police have yet to concretely confirm that Adam Lanza was the shooter, calling him the 'suspect', and have not identified the deceased victim at the residence. These remain assumptions of the press.
This is what Brooker attempted to highlight on his program. We are society obsessed with real-time updates and extraneous details that provide no substance to the actual story. I am just as disgusted as Brooker by the media's constant use of yellow journalism to garner ratings from a tragedy. I'm pissed off that I spent 45 minutes picking through the garbage-worthy updates and misinformation in order to build an accurate timeline that answered the five basic questions of a news story (who, what, where, when, how, why). If journalists cared about providing the public with solid and well-researched information, I wouldn't be forced to do that every time a major event occurs.
Freedom of the press doesn't exist to cover the asses of shoddy journalists who want to release an exclusive or give them permission to harass family members who are still unaware of the events. It is not the freedom to report their own assumptions as fact, based on anonymous source information and sensationalized deductions.
Anyone who defends this sort of reporting, if it warrants such a label, is part of the problem. I don't care who reports the details first. I don't need never-ending coverage of the same misconstrued facts. I want the news-- a short list of details that provides the answers to five elementary questions and nothing more. It is not the job of the press to provide me with entertainment. If I wanted a dramatic re-enactment of events or the subjective opinions of people lucky enough to be on television, I would watch a fictional crime series.
It repulses me that the simple act of reporting has devolved into a sensationalized, money-making venture that extends beyond the horrific indecency of the Pulitzer-Hearst press wars. I refuse to defend the rights of so-called journalists who rely on false and damaging inaccuracies to provide grotesque entertainment for the public.
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