A lot of times, the media mirrors the responsibility of adolescents with information; that is, they are loose with their words and will report any “fact” they hear. Then, when confronted about their spreading of false information, they will simply excuse their behavior by saying something along the lines of “Well, that’s what I heard.” Many journalists are protected- and are well aware of being protected- by a blanket of excuses. As long as another major media source reported it, even if it’s false, you won’t be blamed for spreading the news. Also, many media sources claim that the citizens themselves are the dumb ones; that we should know better. Al gore wrote in his book, The Assault on Reason, “A free press is supposed to function as our democracy’s immune system against… gross errors of fact and understanding,” It’s also ironic that many journalists take more caution in airing a known fact that may be unpopular with the masses than they do when letting loose possibly false information. We should be able to rely on media sources to give us the correct information and not censor anything. We have the right to know facts about what is happening in our nation, especially in the wake of a tragedy, like the Newtown Shootings or, the more recent, Boston Bombings.
If you google search Ryan Lanza, (the brother of Newtown school gunman Adam Lanza) many deceiving photos will appear that depict him to be in the custody of the police, in handcuffs, being forced into a police car. With the right caption, viewers are now informed that a suspect has already been taken into custody; that they’ve officially got the guy. Soon after the reports came out that Ryan Lanza was apparently at fault, pictures of his face with captions like “1 Like = 10000 Punches” circulated social networking sites. Though he was at no fault for the terrible things his brother did, he was made to be the convict.
On Monday, April 15, immediately after the Boston Bombings occurred, the New York Post released information that a 21-year-old Saudi Arabian national student was a suspect. Soon after, the Boston Police Department debunked that report. The April 18th issue of the New York Post featured a cover page with the picture of a 17-year-old track star wearing a backpack with the caption, “BAG MEN”, starting a manhunt for an innocent teen simply because he was wearing a backpack.
In a way, the citizens of our nation may enjoy the drama of false reports. You hear that a person has been convicted for a terrible crime, then the next hour, that they now have absolutely no idea who the culprit is; it’s kind of exciting. You keep the news channels on all day, waiting for the latest information. It is the media’s responsibility to inform us, but it is also their responsibility to entertain us and keep our attention. By adding layers and layers of details to new stories, true or false, it creates an “Edge of the Seat” effect.
So many news reports are confusing. Many people are still totally misinformed about topics that happened decades ago, largely because of false reports by the media, and their lack of correction of those false reports. Ignorance is absolutely not bliss. Belief of false reports breeds uninformed opinions, creating generations of people who, for example, still think that the president is a practicing Muslim.
Next time you decide to make a Facebook post condemning the “convict” of the most recent crime, think twice. Wait a couple of hours to see if there is a change in information. The only way to stop the epidemic of widespread ignorance and misinformation is to become more informed on your own and to understand that not everything you hear is factual.