We look to the media to provide accuracy and honesty, hopefully with as much detail as possible. I am sure some stories told deserve way more time than given, but when you only have 10 or 15 minutes to deliver the day's high lights .. well, it is what it is, right?
With today's "plugged in world" (and do note kiddies, not everyone can afford to be plugged in or even wants to be plugged in), after we hear media stories we often jump on to the net to find out more. And what they say is true... not everything you read on the internet is factual or unbiased.
I happened to be taking a break from twitter today, came back in to discover a non-stop rant and rag over a story that CTV Edmonton did on a tweet by an Edmonton Police Service constable involved in a social media experiment (Linda Hoang article here).
To be honest, I am not sure what the real issue is here. Looking at the webcast of this story, there doesn't seem to be a willingness by the station to smear anyone... only an interest in letting you know what they are hearing.
Imagine if you were the News Director, and someone called in or sent a message of some form saying "Hey, did you guys see this? Isn't it a little weird for a cop to be showing something like that?". Maybe you look, maybe you don't. Maybe you start getting a few more calls, more posts, more emails, more tweets... so at some point you look. Its your job to do that.
I mean, there must have been some interest. The station spent the time to show the situation to several of those in the general public, and asked for a response. And people gave their opinions...
Whats the problem? Media have a responsibility to provide you with information. It's up to you to determine what, if anything, you want to do with that information.
For God's sake, don't beat the messenger!
Tonight in twitter (yes, it's Friday now, I'm still living Thursday) I tweeted about how people are so two faced. This does require more of an explanation, so here goes...
The ranting some people are doing on this topic is like... unreal. And THIS is such a trivial issue after all... Where were you, when important things that really mattered, needed to be talked about? Where was the huge outcry...
And no, I am not going to get into specifics about situations or people. Thousands of things pass by us each and every day in twitter. A fair number of those deal with injustices and really bad shit all over the world. ALL over the world. Quite a few of those also affect Canada or Alberta or Edmonton, and/or people we love and trust.
Things WAY more important than this story. So I ask again...
Where were you, when important things that really mattered, needed to be talked about? Where was the huge outcry...
