(The Huffington Post, April 26, 2013)
Media coverage of the tragic and ongoing
developments related to the Boston Marathon bombings highlights the dramatic
changes in breaking-news coverage as the nation prepares to mark the 50th
anniversary of another horrifying tragedy in our history -- the 1963
assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Much has changed, and much has not,
since that grim day in Dealey Plaza. In any case, as has been true for some
time now, the implications for communications students at our nation's colleges
and universities are significant.
The death of JFK, who once spoke on the
Bethany College campus, was a watershed event in instant, breaking-news
coverage. After initial voiceover bulletins announcing gunshots in the
president's motorcade (Walter Cronkite of CBS broke in on the soap opera As the World Turns) on Friday, November 22, all three
networks and some local stations went live with continual, on-the-air studio
updates of the unfolding events in Dallas. Coverage would last all the way
through Kennedy's funeral on that Monday. Memorably, Cronkite fought for
composure as he announced on the air the "apparently official" death
of the young president whom he had personally interviewed for a CBS special a
little more than two months before.
"Uncle Walter," like most of
his broadcast contemporaries, had come to the TV newsroom from conventional
journalism (newspaper) backgrounds. Fifty years ago, in 1963, the media
landscape was still dominated by the printed word, and by the imperative of
getting the story right before it was published in early and final editions of
America's newspapers. Indeed, Americans still received their daily news from
the newsprint page -- cities had several morning and afternoon papers -- and
from abbreviated nightly TV broadcasts by three major networks (CBS, NBC, and
ABC) featuring trusted male-authority figures, like Cronkite, Chet Huntley,
David Brinkley and others. There were limited visuals. Videotape and live,
remote news coverage were in their infancy. Not every TV program was broadcast
in color. The idea of 24-hour-a-day news broadcasting later pioneered by CNN,
or a channel devoted exclusively to weather coverage, would have seemed then
like science fiction.
Radio was terrestrial, often featuring live, original programming in contrast to today's digital, recorded formats. We had barely begun the age of human space flight, let alone launched the kinds of sophisticated, orbital satellites that now permit instant, global transmission of sight and sound. Online news sources and advertising, the hundreds of cable TV options we now have, webstreaming, and other media developments familiar to us today were decades away.
Radio was terrestrial, often featuring live, original programming in contrast to today's digital, recorded formats. We had barely begun the age of human space flight, let alone launched the kinds of sophisticated, orbital satellites that now permit instant, global transmission of sight and sound. Online news sources and advertising, the hundreds of cable TV options we now have, webstreaming, and other media developments familiar to us today were decades away.
Film and still photography, not TV
trucks with antennae positioned for satellite downloads, recorded the fatal
shots in Dallas. Wire-service reporters initially called in the story.
Two days after the president's
assassination, another shooting was captured live on TV with the stunning
murder of the president's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Television news
was no longer studio-bound, but instead a live witness to history -- and in the
minds of many, that weekend changed broadcasting media forever.
Fast-forward to the events in Boston of
April 15. This time, the tragedy was covered from multiple angles; everyone
with a cell phone was a potential witness. Indeed, digital photography, video
and social media were instrumental in the tracking, days later, of the bombing
suspects and the placing in custody of the surviving one. Daily coverage of the
aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, including the climactic manhunt in
Watertown, continues. Four heartbreaking days in November 1963, in which the
media were largely observers -- influential ones, yes, but in a much more
limited role compared to today -- have been supplanted by instant, 24-hour
coverage, commentary, opinion, speculation.
As with Dallas in 1963, much of the
early reported information from the site of the Marathon was simply inaccurate.
But today's media, with their blurring of the roles of reporter and
commentator, with the on-air personalities becoming more and more a part of the
story itself, with live TV and social media facilitating not just coverage but
a national conversation about the story, make Walter Cronkite's suppressed
emotion on November 22, 1963, seem like a model of restraint and dignity.
Further, what may have taken a
generation for a photo to be considered "iconic" can now receive that
designation in moments -- especially if it has a connotation of the events of
9/11 and the raw, vulnerable feelings of Americans, accompanied by scenes of
instant, makeshift memorials, fist-pumping patriotism, the raising of a
recovered American flag over Ground Zero.
Technology has ramped up the immediacy
of any breaking news, and we expect that -- indeed, depend on it. Yet the
lessons for students of what used to be known as journalism lead to
longstanding, critical questions about whether we still require "getting
it right" before going with the details of any story; what the limits
should be, if any, in reporting on the workings of law enforcement (Oswald was
surrounded by cameras and reporters when he was gunned down in the Dallas
police headquarters; NBC's Lester Holt in Boston revealed to viewers that a
police officer had yelled at him for venturing too close to barricades); what
privacy victims' families deserve versus their own increasing, expected and
highly visible roles in the public's hunt for justice; whether all the instant,
constant coverage will continue to desensitize us not only to the horror of
such tragedies but also to the agenda of prevention of terrorism and the
preservation of social order. Most who lived through Kennedy's assassination
were probably never quite the same afterward. Boston, admittedly a different
kind of calamity, is the latest in a series. The media this time were quick to
pounce with commentary on the supposed "complacency" of our nation in
the intervening years since September 11, 2001.
Perhaps most compelling of all is the
question of whether online and social media can, or should, ever be restrained
or controlled. The accused Boston bombers reportedly learned their craft on the
Internet; their demise was at the hands of dedicated, heroic police officers
and a band of Big Brothers with mobile phones.
It's a conversation students and faculty
should have as we brace ourselves for what might come next and which will,
inevitably, not simply unfold as a story but explode.
Stand by....
# # # #
Dr. Scott D. Miller is president of Bethany College and M.M.
Cochran Professor of Leadership Studies. Now in his 22nd year as a college
president, he serves as a consultant to college presidents and boards.
