For me, news of the Boston bombing broke on my phone, in a remote hotel on the island of Providenciales in Turks and Caicos, where I had gone for a speaking engagement at a corporate offsite. First came emails with no context, from friends asking if I was okay. Next I checked the Web to see what was up, and got the basics. Then, back in my hotel room, I got WBUR on my phone and listened for awhile to live coverage. Then I fell into an old habit: finding CNN on the hotel TV and watching it until the looping of already-said stuff became intolerable, and moved on.
Today, back in New York, we’ve been working at home with CNN running on our “TV” (an old flat screen connected to an older laptop channeling our Dish Network receiver in Santa Barbara). The sound is muted, and every so often we look up to see what’s being scrolled across the bottom, noting how the need-to-scoop outruns the facts of the case, whatever they are. I stifled the urge to document the silliness of it all, because I was sure somebody or other would do a better job. The first I found was Josh Marshall on TPM, inviting us to “Relive It (CNN’s 90 Minutes of Awesome).”
Specifically, CNN said somebody had been arrested, and there would be more at 5pm. Then CNN said nobody had been arrested, but continued to harp on the allegedly suspicious actions of some guy caught on pixels. “SOURCES: POSSIBLE SUSPECT SEEN ON VIDEO” it says now. (Bonus link.)
From a journalistic perspective, what we see here is a dissolving of the old canon, and with it old habits, and the more gradual construction of a new canon, by countless persons other than those who maintain the old one (but including maintainers who are not in denial). The new canon, when it coheres, years from now, will be the omelette we make of many factual eggs, seen and heard by many eyes and ears, and cooked by many brains. Many professional journalists will still be involved, because journalism will remain a profession and cream will still rise. But we won’t be putting Humpty’s new guts back in TV news’ broken shell. (Going for a new metaphorizing record here.)
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