Can we stop?

I received an email from an aunt yesterday who said that she had been watching television’s coverage of the event in Boston and couldn’t seem to stop. She was very upset. This was hours after it happened.

I was curious and turned on the tv for about 5 minutes. It was just the same couple of video clips over and over, with the occasional “expert” coming on to answer ridiculous questions about things they could know nothing about. Changing the channels just resulted in a survey of newscasters and their hyperbole, wild speculations, and apparent desire to make this seem even more sad/bad than it really is.

If you’re sitting there watching this stuff – why? What possible utility is it to you? Not to make light of it, but what little extra piece of info that might leak out during the next 3 hours of tape loops could be so important that you will be able to proceed with your day accordingly? Are you going to solve the case?

Sure, a couple of bombs went off, 3 people were killed and 140+ were injured. It was scary to the people there. It’s reasonable to feel that it “could have been us”. We might feel empathy for those victims and the people who were there.

But if you weren’t there, what are you going to gain from watching television “news”. What if the people heading the investigation just put out a statement every time they had an update in the case that was relevant to the public (for possible witness situations)? Wouldn’t this be sufficient? We could read the brief statement and move on.