Friday, April 19, 2013

Taking a break from watching the Boston coverage

My main sources of information about the Boston Marathon bombings over the past few days have been BostonGlobe.com and Boston.com, but I realized today that I have to give those a break, after seeing essentially the same message ("suspect remains at large") repeated several times over the course of the day with different wordings ("manhunt underway," "suspect on the loose," etc.) to give the impression that there are new developments.

This is a nightmarish situation, but for people who aren't currently in the thick of it, let's step back. People who ought to know better are pouncing on every bit of new information and running with it, regardless of whether it's confirmed or not. Same goes for trying to come up with a narrative, right this moment, to explain the attackers' motives, when they were just identified yesterday and we still don't know everything about them and how they got to the point in their lives where they thought it would be an awesome idea to kill and maim random people. I hope the surviving one is captured soon. But please let's deal with this patiently. I understand the urge to speculate, but doing so publicly, while re-tweeting rumors and fake photos and delivering broadcasts based on information from unofficial sources, is irresponsible.

Not that I think this post will have an effect on that. Just wanted to vent a little.