Mr. Goldman stated that in the heat of the moment hearing the information from the police in real time felt like the very most accurate account he could hear so he Tweeted all the information he could even though some of it was code and not very helpful to most. He later found while in the middle of his reporting, information he was hearing that he assumed was accurate was changing and the story wasn't really coherent and stable. When he started listening he and about 80,000 other citizens believed they were listening to a narrated version of what was happening minute by minute. Later he realized that really not all of the information was correct and even he had been Tweeting false information that hadn't been verified.
I agree with Mr. Goldman completely. I understand how hearing information straight from the police could feel authentic but if you imagine what is happening in that moment as a police officer on the street seeing things happen and then also relying on the information of the other officers and of the dispatch you could see how even the police don't take exactly what is said to them over the radio as Bible. Its like a mystery game of Clue. When you play the game you have to use a few facts that you know and then try to pay attention and listen to the other players all while trying to figure out the unknown and trying to remember that you as an individual player of the game do not have all of the facts and some of the information you do have is opinion based on the information you gather and unconfirmed information that fits into your idea of what you think is happening.
I think that the title of Authenticity can not be given to a source of information unless it has been thoroughly checked and checked again. Even eye witness accounts are jumbled with personal opinions of how they remember accounts happening.
Even news sources are not reliable anymore because of something that Goldman said, "There is a thrill of being the first to know and the first to report the information." This is true of News stations, CNN, Fox, NBC all in a competition to break the news first. Accuracy is important but because of the Internet and regular citizens playing journalist, being accurate is not as important as getting the information out the fastest.
It saddens me to see how much information that's out is easily taken at face value and then spread along to the rest of the masses.
I think a while ago I talked about my Face Book feed and a lot of re posted stories that are just spreading fear and ignorance. A couple of months ago a girl re posted a story of a poisonous spider new to the USA that had put five women in the hospital. I found the story on snopes.com and shared the link to the facts in the comments. Just today I saw the same story on a different feed and it even had a different picture of the supposedly same new poison spider. I'm at the point of exhaustion. I want to re post the snopes.com link but whats the point? Fixing misinformation problems may not be found by giving people the facts but in some way training everyone to research information before spreading it. I don't think people really realize the destruction they are doing by spreading stories like this. Maybe people don't realize it at the time but the audience will subconsciously tuck that information into their brain and instead of just becoming cautious of their surroundings they become paranoid and un trusting of our world as a whole. Just think of how many scary facts have been told that people take at face value. It seems to me that now instead of urban legends like Moth Man or the babysitter who gets a call from inside the house by a deranged maniac, there is a 50/50 chance that the information you see, hear, or read is just our society's new urban legends
I feel a rant about how our government may benefit by keeping the citizens in fear so instead here are the two pictures of the one new poisonous spider.
In a weird highly inaccurate way I feel like my Zing of Authenticity source of news information would have to be The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I know these shows are just based around joking about the news but I guess I listen closely because it feels more like the objective view of a trusted friend observing the stories with me and thinking the same way about the information but presenting it in a much more humorous and interesting way. Regular T.V. News anchors seem to be talking heads that spew information that is biased and skewed to the Left or Right.
To me the Zing of Authenticity is not the source that is in fact most accurate but the source that the audience feels is the most accurate.
And now Your Moment of Zen...
