Facts get lost in media’s rush for scoop
During the summer of 1996, an innocent man became the target of an investigation after a horrendous crime.
Richard W. Jewell, who had been working security at night and as a police officer during the day, not only had nothing to do with the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, he’d been the first person to spot the pipe bomb, and he tried to clear the area before it went off.
But, because of the rush to find the culprit, the news media began characterizing Jewell as an inept police officer who had planted the bomb, and then “discovered” it, just to bolster his image.
The media was wrong. That media frenzy, ignited by an FBI leak that Jewell was considered a suspect, had a devastating effect on his life.
Nearly a decade later, the real Olympic Park Bomber, Eric Robert Rudolph, confessed to a series of bombings — including the one during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. The media might have learned its lesson, but apparently it hasn’t.
Last Wednesday, CNN and the Associated Press, both, carelessly announced that a suspect had been taken into custody and had been placed under arrest in the Boston Marathon Bombings. Not true.
Soon after, MSNBC announced that there had been no suspects taken into custody.
CNN, feeling the effects of its self-inflicted blunder, ran a crawl across its screen that read, “Conflicting Reports On Arrest of Boston Bomber.” That was followed by a group of red-faced reporters speculating about the faulty stream of information that had supposedly come from “an unidentified law enforcement source.”
MSNBC, though, shouldn’t feel as if it had won some truth in media award. On the night of the attack, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who seems to have some kind of affliction that causes him to omit periods at the ends of his sentences, breathlessly began speculating about who might be the person (or persons) responsible for the Boston Bombing. Curiously, Matthews developed the nutty theory that, since there’d been reports that some kind of problem had taken place at the JFK Library (something that was later found not to be true), the bombings may have been the work of some anti-Democratic, anti-Kennedy, far-right bomber.
Matthews is a liberal. I’m a liberal, too. But I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen him wrap significance around nonsense, and I’ve screamed SHUT UP at my television.
I’ve worked in the field covering news stories that required an immediate gathering of details, so I truly understand the need to get as much information as possible, and the best way you can.
Facts just don’t leap onto reporter’s notepads.
But watching the events of last Monday unfold made me wonder if there are even more Richard Jewells out there.
The 24-hour news cycle, with its wall-to-wall coverage, can take us to any tragedy around the world; show it to us in vivid detail — and from just about every angle — with uncanny immediacy.
The facts surrounding those events almost always lag behind the video.
In Boston, the initial reports were wrong about the number of bombs that exploded; the number of casualties; the means and methods of the attack; and whether anybody was taken into custody.
Yet, I’m fairly certain most Americans really want to know two things — who did this, and why. Who would seek to kill innocent Americans and disrupt the daily lives of others, to send messages of hatred?
By Monday night, though, when facts were slow in coming, the media sideshow had gone full tilt.
Amidst the parades of explosives and terrorism experts, law enforcement officials and anybody who could come up with long-winded answers to longer-winded questions — the ugly face of American political bluster started to surface. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly chastised President Obama for calling the Boston Marathon Bombings a “tragedy.”
O’Reilly claimed the president should have called it a “vile act of violence designed to kill innocent people, including children.” I think, and this is pure “speculation,” but O’Reilly must’ve been having a low fiber day.
Uniontown native Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net