So I am just wondering what you have all thought of the coverage so far?
And how are they going to continue to cover this news?
And how should they cover this news?
My own opinion:
Original coverage has been quite good - they stuck to the facts, did not leap to any major conclusions and they have been cautious about declaring this a foreign-based terrorist attack until they have more info.
Now it remains to be seen if they start going in for the heart-ripping stories and start asking inane questions to sobbing family members like, “How did you feel when you heard your loved one lost their [life, leg, limb]?” Seriously - I think we all pretty much know how they felt, or at least have a damned good idea, instead of making someone break down in sobs on camera.
Of course this is a huge story, but I would hope they continue to cover it as an ongoing investigation - using proof and facts and trying to find the person/people who caused this. And I would hope they could refrain from trying to milk every tear from family and friends and victims - and if they do any interviews at all, at least include the doctors and emergency teams and volunteers who were there, did their jobs and should be honored and commended.
Your thoughts on the coverage so far, and what they will/should do in further news coverage?
I think it’s been pretty restrained actually. The main thing I have been happy about is that no one seems to be jumping too wildly to conclusions about who did this.
Well, there were a few news coverage fuck-ups fairly quickly.
The New York Post was quick to publish that a Saudi citizen (or national), who was injured and in the hospital, was in custody as a “person of interest”. The Boston Police quickly denied that anything of the sort was true. When some of the dust settled, it seems that they initially interviewed the guy and quickly decided that he wasn’t involved at all.
Then, certain elements of the Far Wacko Right Wing Media have been ranting about killing all the evil Muslims, as usual.
I agree that it’s been done pretty well so far. I posted that in some other thread. I’m surprised to say this is a sign that we are maturing as a society. So I guess we’ll just have a panic reaction to something else in a short while to restore the balance.
The New York Post has been the main source of sensationalistic, incorrect rumors. Most other organizations seem to be doing a really good job of calm and accurate reporting. I had the NPR feed on for most of yesterday afternoon, and thought their reporters were behaving very professionally and admirably.
I got angry at some of the questions that they were asking the ER doctor at his presser last night.
Q: “How has your training in the Israeli Security Force helped here?”
A: “What? I was never in the Israeli Security Force.”
“Is this the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” <-- This was asked roughly half a dozen times; the doctor was very restrained, but seemed like he wanted to yell, “I’m a fucking ER doctor, what do you think I see every day?!”
First, the factual aspect of the coverage seems about as best we can expect in breaking news like this, and cool heads are mostly prevailing.
However, I have the same complaint about this coverage that I have for all such events. It’s over-covered. After they repeat the same information and show the same video over and over enough times, they start asking people related to the event to describe their experience. These people get farther and farther from the event: “How did you feel when you heard that your brother-in-law was scheduled to run in the Marathon but cancelled when he came down with the flu?” Then they interview random unknown experts their opinions about this or that, with questions that either have no answer or an obvious one: “Could a terrorist have done this?”
I agree that what I’ve seen has been pretty good even though there have not been a whole lot of confirmed facts. Jane Harman on CNN did her sure of wild ass speculating (about Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, among many other things), and it got bad enough that I changed the channel. I do think anyone who retweets conspiracy theory idiocy even as a joke is probably doing everyone a disservice and should cut the crap.
The Post was basically right, and the denial from the Boston Police was more technical than anything else. The Post said he was in custody, which was not true because he was not arrested or named as a suspect. But the police did (do?) have him under guard at a hospital and they have questioned him. The government has suggested people shouldn’t make too much of this, though.
The FBI searched his apartment overnight, so he was not dismissed that quickly. Nobody knows if he was involved or not.
I saw that too. I thought the reporters there were generally pretty well-behaved, but you could tell that a few of them really just wanted a statement from the guy along the lines of, “This is horrific, I have never seen anything like this in my life, we are all barely coping here,” and instead he indicated that he is a medical professional and is doing his job just like everyone else there, and this is a busier day than usual for them, yes, but that is all.
I agree. They’ve preempted all the network shows here, of course, so it’s a requirement that they overcover to do something with the time between breaking news flashes and reiterating what’s already known about it. After you’ve heard the same spiel for X amount of time, you either turn off the TV or change the channel.
That suggests that the search probably didn’t turn up anything interesting, and the guy just has the misfortune of fitting the wrong profile.
But the fact remains, the New York Post article was more correct than not. Although they kept on reporting a dozen casualties long after everyone else had dropped the number down to 3.
My complaint is the same that I always have when big news stories break. After about a half-hour, maybe an hour max, they’ve run out of things to talk about. But they’ve already cleared the TV schedule for the next 3 days, so they keep rehashing everythong over & over (and over and over and over…) and inviting every moron who claims to be some sort of expert to offer their opinion on things.
From what I understand is that the Boston Marathon is a very big deal in Boston. Huge deal. Coincides with Patriot’s day and is a state holiday. I was only peripherally aware of this. Sorry for speculating but that to me makes me think it’s domestic terrorism rather than something from abroad.
Also, this is something nice that Patton Oswalt wrote in response to the bombing:
I forgot about that. Yes, that was totally wrong even though some people were reported to be very badly injured. Although if I may nitpick you here: casualties means dead and injured, not just dead. There are 176 casualties or whatever the current number is. There are three fatalities (if for some reason ‘deaths’ is not acceptable).
Haven’t turned on a TV since I heard about it on the radio yesterday driving home from work. Brief listens to the radio and the front Yahoo page are sufficient to give me a body count and indicate whether anyone has claimed responsibility or been arrested. Not interested in much else, and never really realize why so many folk seem to want to wallow in these things.
I don’t think it’s been the worst. How’s that for a resounding endorsement?
I felt the pictures distributed early on were too graphic and too personal. This is coming from a privacy perspective, not so much a “oh no, it’s too gory!” perspective. I realize this is a minority view.
I agree they have run out of things to say. I was somewhat surprised this morning when I got up and there was essentially no news about progress in the investigation. I realize this could be because there is no progress, or because investigators are still playing things close, but either way, there is not a lot to report right now.
I am sort of exempting the Post from these assessments, because, well, it’s the Post. As a New Yorker, one develops a way of reading the Post, which assumes dialing down anything they might say by about 90%.
(FYI, my metric for “the worst” is Sandy Hook. That coverage was the worst.)
Because 2 years ago I would have been running near the finish line at that time. Because a good friend crossed the finish line 2 minutes before the first blast. Because a good friend was a copy on duty at the finish line. Because for a few hours I didn’t know whether people I cared about were alive. The details are important to me and how the news media reports those details is important as well.
Earlier today I heard a female anchor questioning a reporter on the scene. Paraphrasing, it was “we’ve had to be very careful not to show any scenes that are too graphic, out of respect for the families of people who have been affected by this tragedy— but could you describe for us some of the scenes you’ve witnessed that are too graphic for us to show?”
By God, we’re going to tell you about blood and carnage and limbs blown off, even if we can’t run the footage!
Well, that certainly explains why you might be interested. I’d be very surprised if more than a small percentage of folk watching the news either ran Boston (or any marathon), or had good friends doing so.
A lot of people seem eager to spend a lot of time on crime/disaster minutiae. Personally, I don’t understand it. I readily acknowledge that my feelings seem to make me the odd man out. I’ll have no difficulty finding things to do other than hearing “Nothing new to report - let’s interview someone with nothing to say” over and over.
Dinsdale, I think you may be underestimating how big of a deal the Boston Marathon is. I’m a runner, and I dream that I’ll be able to qualify for it one day. Having this bombing happen at the event that is the pinnacle of American distance running made it a much bigger story to a much bigger audience, especially with the media coverage that was already there just to cover the event itself. If this happened at the “Podunk Library 5K”, we’d probably be getting something closer to “Nothing new to report…”.