Friday 8 July 2016

While you were away…



The very first thing I saw when I woke up today was someone getting shot, a video on twitter that showed the shooter in Dallas. A story that dominated headlines all day.
Horrific, from all viewpoints and a story we will no doubt learn more of in the coming days.

Twitter is great, social media (for the most part) is a good thing that can inform, amuse and entertain.

On days like today, Twitter hinders. It dilutes the pool of information with re-hashed headlines, ‘BREAKING NEWS’ and speculation. Rather than writing about the people, the reason or what those in power might be able to do, some journalist’s time was devoted to tracking down and sharing the picture of a man who was not involved and writing articles about a deleted tweet from a former politician who’s idiocy if measured by numbers would be tenfold his amount of followers.


As news becomes more international and local/ national tragedies are broadcast round the world faster than is healthy, we’ll need to find a better way of working/ reacting online, especially if something is on going. Even though we’re becoming numb, many still attach a lot of trust to the words ‘Breaking News’ and this leads to miss information and misconception. The last thing that this tragedy needs is for an important message to get lost. A message that if it was already held in the palaces that it's not, this might have been avoided. #BlackLivesMatter