The Media and the Manhunt:
The Banality of Evil (and Good)
Christine Deluna and Zach Crawford
On Wednesday April 17, CNN’s Peter King reported live on TV
a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was taken into custody. This would
have been a huge victory for CNN and Boston…if it were true. King falsely
reported this “breaking” story and started a media firestorm, which ended in
every reporter in a 100-mile radius descending on a Boston courthouse only to
find there was no suspect, and oh, now there’s a bomb threat at the
courthouse. Shamefully, CNN’s next
BREAKING NEWS bulletin would feature its own journalist’s negligence.
CNN’s misreporting
Wednesday became the catalyst to the media equivalent to a chicken running
around without a head, wings, and legs. From the millisecond-by-millisecond
coverage of the manhunt to the post arrest schmorgesborg of misleading and
speculative coverage, the media’s response to the Boston Marathon bombings has
revealed the flaws of many news outlets while highlighting the strengths in
others. Unfortunately, these strengths were, and continue to be, outshined by
hypotheticals and flashy attempts to contextualize and sensationalize a news story, even if some (or entire) details are completely irrelevant.
