April has been a rough month. On the 2nd my friend's 20-year-old brother passed away from a long fight with cancer. That next Saturday, I got word from back home that another friend's Dad had lost his life in a fire Given that my father passed away five years ago, that one hit me hard. To top it off, the following Wednesday one of my idols, Baroness Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Great Britain, died from a stroke. Since I've always been told bad things come in threes, I figured that was it for bad news – at least for a little while.
But on Monday, April 15, 2013 more bad news erupted while I was sitting in #loweclass. Around 2:45 p.m., two explosions went off near the finish line of the 117th running of the Boston Marathon. Three people were pronounced dead and at least 140 people were injured. It was a dark, scary day for Boston and the entire country, and the fear did not subside until the following Friday when the second suspect were found and arrested after a week-long manhunt.
The media went on a frenzy with everything having to do with the bombings. So much so, that they barely covered the April 17 West Texas fertilizer plant explosion, which sources are saying has left 60 to 70 people dead. Each day's coverage of the Boston bombings seemed to reveal new information on the victims, the explosives used, the rumored suspects and the manhunt to capture them. In order to keep up with the latest breaking news, I tuned into CNN and the BBC. Based on my prior critique of the news sources, I figured they would be the most reliable and provide the best coverage.
I was thoroughly impressed by the coverage the BBC provided of the Boston bombings. I preferred the content on their website compared to CNN's because their video footage was, how can I say this? Juicier. When I went searching for the picture of "severed limbs," I found it on the BBC, raw and uncensored. When I wanted live coverage of President Barack Obama's address to the nation, it was broadcasted live on the home page. Everything I needed the BBC had. As I've said before, it is most impressive to me that a foreign news outlet delivers such wide coverage of an American crisis. I realize the BBC has representatives in the U.S., but it shows just how much they care about reporting the news of the world.
Whenever I was infront of the computer, I was on the lookout for the latest happenings. I was inthralled, like the rest of America was, with finding the suspects. But since I was at Miller Park Stadium when the suspect was found in a Watertown man's boat, I wasn't able to hop onto my Macbook to watch everything go down. I loved that I could get the latest news from BBC's twitter account. By refreshing my news feed, I understood what was going on in that poor man's backyard even though I couldn't see it. It was almost more exciting because I had to wait for a new tweet to pop up with the latest 140 characters of information.
Today, the BBC continues to provide coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings but not to the extent it was last week. Since the news is no longer breaking, I've seen a rise in the amount of features and profiles posted the last two days. BBC Magazine has written numerous editorials centered on terrorism, religion, and America's child death epidemic. As all of us sit here and wonder why such bad things have happened in our country, it is nice to see a news source criticize us and our culture in order to give us some answers.
I believe I learned at a very young age that life is precious. All of us know it, but we fail to recognize its every day beauty until we see such tragic events, such as the Boston bombings, the Colorado movie theater shooting, the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting or the West Texas fertilizer plant explosion. When such events are so heavily reported, they hit close to home. They hurt. The whole country got rocked by the two explosions at the marathon on Monday.
I know the media received a lot of negative criticism of its narrowly focused coverage, however I felt it was necessary. It was almost a coping mechanism. The television watchers, radio listeners, web surfers, and tweeters mourned the loss of the victims, hunted the suspects, and rallied together for Boston. The media connected everyone, and when it comes down to it, that's what we need most during these unimaginable circumstances. We need a network of support, and I think the BBC provided that.
But on Monday, April 15, 2013 more bad news erupted while I was sitting in #loweclass. Around 2:45 p.m., two explosions went off near the finish line of the 117th running of the Boston Marathon. Three people were pronounced dead and at least 140 people were injured. It was a dark, scary day for Boston and the entire country, and the fear did not subside until the following Friday when the second suspect were found and arrested after a week-long manhunt.
The media went on a frenzy with everything having to do with the bombings. So much so, that they barely covered the April 17 West Texas fertilizer plant explosion, which sources are saying has left 60 to 70 people dead. Each day's coverage of the Boston bombings seemed to reveal new information on the victims, the explosives used, the rumored suspects and the manhunt to capture them. In order to keep up with the latest breaking news, I tuned into CNN and the BBC. Based on my prior critique of the news sources, I figured they would be the most reliable and provide the best coverage.
I was thoroughly impressed by the coverage the BBC provided of the Boston bombings. I preferred the content on their website compared to CNN's because their video footage was, how can I say this? Juicier. When I went searching for the picture of "severed limbs," I found it on the BBC, raw and uncensored. When I wanted live coverage of President Barack Obama's address to the nation, it was broadcasted live on the home page. Everything I needed the BBC had. As I've said before, it is most impressive to me that a foreign news outlet delivers such wide coverage of an American crisis. I realize the BBC has representatives in the U.S., but it shows just how much they care about reporting the news of the world.
Whenever I was infront of the computer, I was on the lookout for the latest happenings. I was inthralled, like the rest of America was, with finding the suspects. But since I was at Miller Park Stadium when the suspect was found in a Watertown man's boat, I wasn't able to hop onto my Macbook to watch everything go down. I loved that I could get the latest news from BBC's twitter account. By refreshing my news feed, I understood what was going on in that poor man's backyard even though I couldn't see it. It was almost more exciting because I had to wait for a new tweet to pop up with the latest 140 characters of information.
Today, the BBC continues to provide coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings but not to the extent it was last week. Since the news is no longer breaking, I've seen a rise in the amount of features and profiles posted the last two days. BBC Magazine has written numerous editorials centered on terrorism, religion, and America's child death epidemic. As all of us sit here and wonder why such bad things have happened in our country, it is nice to see a news source criticize us and our culture in order to give us some answers.
I believe I learned at a very young age that life is precious. All of us know it, but we fail to recognize its every day beauty until we see such tragic events, such as the Boston bombings, the Colorado movie theater shooting, the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting or the West Texas fertilizer plant explosion. When such events are so heavily reported, they hit close to home. They hurt. The whole country got rocked by the two explosions at the marathon on Monday.
I know the media received a lot of negative criticism of its narrowly focused coverage, however I felt it was necessary. It was almost a coping mechanism. The television watchers, radio listeners, web surfers, and tweeters mourned the loss of the victims, hunted the suspects, and rallied together for Boston. The media connected everyone, and when it comes down to it, that's what we need most during these unimaginable circumstances. We need a network of support, and I think the BBC provided that.
RSS Feed