Tonight I was just watching The Daily
Show with Jon Stewart, a comedy show, which skewers both politicians and the
media. On this particular show they
addressed how the three major news networks – Fox, MSNBC, and CNN – covered the
shooting in Washington D.C. this week. Because
they are 24-hour news networks, they have a lot of time to fill, and Jon was
illustrating that during incidents like the shooting these networks go a little
crazy trying to fill airtime with trivial descriptions and ludicrous conjectures. I thought this segment of The Daily Show
brought up a whole host of pertinent questions vital to journalism and media in
today’s age, but the one that struck me the most is what standards should journalists strive for in this day and age? This interested me because Jon pointed out
that many people on CNN especially were making wild conjectures about the
shooter without many or, at times, really any facts to back up these
theories. Also, the day of the shooting
I was looking at Twitter and noticed that even news sources like The Boston
Globe were reporting that there were three shooters, when really, by the time
the 6:00 p.m. news aired, it was revealed there was only one. This idea of news outlets needing to compete
to get out news first is a bit disturbing to me and one that forgoes much of
the verification process. It’s an idea I’d
like to follow and look into more in the future.
The clip of the show can be viewed here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-17-2013/wrongnado
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