So, I had intended my next post to be about E3, something I had always wanted to write about (and if you watched the EA presentation today, there's plenty to talk about,) but as I was out eating lunch with my family, my thoughts were consumed by Orlando.
For the three people who probably haven't heard by now, in the early morning hours of June 12, an armed man entered an Orlando, Florida gay bar and night club and, in a vile act of domestic terrorism, proceeded to bring out the deadliest mass shooting in American history. As of 6:50 pm PST, when I'm typing this line, 50 people were killed (including shooter Omar Mateen) and approximately 53 more were hospitalized, many with critical injuries. The death toll is expected to rise.
This post is not about the attack, Mateen, or speculation on his motives.
I'm here to write about media coverage and public reaction in the hours immediately following the conclusion of the attack, which ended with Orlando SWAT storming the club and shooting Mateen down in a firefight around 5 am EST. For more information on this particular incident, there's plenty of other sources.
A practice I've gotten into lately has been posting an infographic to my Facebook feed in the wake of a tragic event, beginning with the November attack on Paris, and again following the attack on Brussels.
I was compelled to post it this time when I began reading the comment thread on my thesis advisor's post where he lamented the targeting of people for slaughter because of who they loved and had sex with. One person, who I will not name because screw that guy, proceeded to quote "FBI agents on the scene" to make comments about how he was an ISIS sleeper agent, one of many who would end up on American shores posing as refugees, and other common ultra-xenophobic buzz words.
What stuck out to me was the vagueness of his sources. Rule 2 of the above guide for interpreting coverage of breaking news seems to be fairly straightforward to me, because as Rule 8 has made clear, people love to make things up when the facts are still being discovered. Especially in a situation like this, the only thing that reigns is confusion. People can and will take advantage of this to spread misinformation for their own ends, whether in an attempt to steer discourse in their favor, or otherwise further their own agenda.
That, or just be a dick. Totally possible.
I can't help but think as the duty of the fourth estate swings from established media edifices to the hands of every person with a thought and a smart phone, the concept of media literacy has fallen by the wayside. My Facebook feed is full of people believing just about everything they read on the Internet, the same medium that redefined a Presidential candidate's last name as, and I quote, "a frothy mixture of fecal matter and anal lube that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."
Now, however, the Internet is the primary source for information for many, many people, myself included. Something I practice, however, is media literacy, something I do not often see outside of my friends and contacts outside of mass media. Basically, I do this by following the rules of that infographic I find myself regularly posting.
It's not that difficult. Simply put, investigate what you read. Know who said it, when they said it, and the context they said it in. What makes this person qualified to say this? Can what they said be verified elsewhere, either through evidence and corroboration?
We have to be mindful about the media we consume. Not whether its offensive or vulgar, but whether what is held out to be true is actually true. After all...