Some common sense about the news cycle

[nancylebov]

Nick Mamatas explains, with examples that the early reports are likely to include a lot of inaccuracy. Some of it will be honest mistakes, and some of it will probably be motivated by stereotypes.

The thing is, the media wants your attention, and possibly they don't want to seem callous by doing their normal programming.... but the information just isn't there.

I'm speaking to you as someone who freaked after 9/11, and literally spent months reading rasf* newsgroups and listening to NPR. After a while, I realized that NPR was just repeating itself because there wasn't any new news coming in, but I still couldn't pry myself loose. Well, emotions are emotions and depression is depression, but if you can find something else to do instead of hoping for one more crumb of finding out what's going on, I recommend it.

Shira Lipkin passed this on from Colleen Lindsay on Facebook:

There are a lot of folks out there who weren't at the marathon who will nevertheless have their PTSD triggered by the events in Boston today. If you're feeling scared, anxious, depressed or alone, please reach out to someone who loves you, call a friend, or call the Disaster Distress Helpline (1-800-985-5990), which is monitored 24/7. But don't try to tough it out on your own; remember that asking for help is never a sign of weakness.

Comments

[twistedchick]

The thing is, the media wants your attention, and possibly they don't want to seem callous by doing their normal programming.... but the information just isn't there.

There is another side of this: the pressure within a newspaper or other print source to have everything, have it right and have it now. This is constant, and even worse when there is an emergency and more people are turning to them for details. I'm specifying a print source because that's harder to correct when something is wrong -- if radio or tv news are misinformed, they can break in five minutes later and say, "No, that was wrong, this is how it is", whereas the print source will continue to be referred to and things will get bigger.

A lot of people don't want to talk to the news -- but during emergencies, this changes. Whoever was there, whoever witnessed anything, will want to talk about it, and not all of those who are talking really have anything useful to say. I saw this happen after murders, court cases, hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes. With the tornadoes, more of the widespread reporting-from-local-people was useful because their stories tended to fit together to trace the path of the storm. It's not as helpful when it's the neighbor of someone who just shot his roommate, the neighbor who didn't really hear anything but the gunshot but still has to tell you how much he didn't like the weird sayings on the guy's t-shirts.

[twistedchick]

The thing is, the media wants your attention, and possibly they don't want to seem callous by doing their normal programming.... but the information just isn't there.

There is another side of this: the pressure within a newspaper or other print source to have everything, have it right and have it now. This is constant, and even worse when there is an emergency and more people are turning to them for details. I'm specifying a print source because that's harder to correct when something is wrong -- if radio or tv news are misinformed, they can break in five minutes later and say, "No, that was wrong, this is how it is", whereas the print source will continue to be referred to and things will get bigger.

A lot of people don't want to talk to the news -- but during emergencies, this changes. Whoever was there, whoever witnessed anything, will want to talk about it, and not all of those who are talking really have anything useful to say. I saw this happen after murders, court cases, hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes. With the tornadoes, more of the widespread reporting-from-local-people was useful because their stories tended to fit together to trace the path of the storm. It's not as helpful when it's the neighbor of someone who just shot his roommate, the neighbor who didn't really hear anything but the gunshot but still has to tell you how much he didn't like the weird sayings on the guy's t-shirts.

And it *is* a cycle; time is involved, from reporter to editor to publication or reporter to editor to broadcast. It isn't immediate. Things get changed. Ideally, things get factchecked but we all know that doesn't happen as much any more.