Media should learn from Fort Hood tragedy

College 401 column

By ROBERT RICH

PALESTINE — Unfortunately, there occurred last week another event that will go down in American history as a “Where were you when…” moment. The first, of course, was the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. This second event was, terrifyingly, more close to home. I’m talking about the tragic shootings that took place at Fort Hood.

As for where I was, I was walking to class when I first learned of the incident. I actually came across the news via the Twitter account of the Austin American-Statesman, a strange way to find out, but also striking evidence of how effective the social media platform can be in breaking news situations.

My heart goes out to all affected by the tragedy, and I send my condolences wherever they may do some good, but that’s not what I want to write about today. I’d like to take a look at the way the situation was handled by journalists, and how they succeeded, but also how they failed.

First and foremost, all news organizations did a great job getting word out that something had happened at Fort Hood. However, when it comes to clarifying exactly what happened, they all fell into the trap of the Internet. Since the advent of web news, the news cycle is now continuous, and beliefs are that you have to put up information constantly. This means that often information is put up on the Web site without being fully checked for factual accuracy. This is the reason that so many of the early stories about the incident contained claims that the shootings had been the work of a group of people, and then only two people, until finally the correct information (one person) was discovered and written. Furthermore, most early stories also reported that the shooter had been shot and killed, which of course would place things in a whole different context. We all know by now that the shooter was actually only wounded, and woke up and was talking last Monday.

The implication here is that because of the rush to write stories and get the information out to the public, a lot of incorrect information was reported. On one side, you could say that that’s to be expected with breaking news, and the public deserves to know what’s happening in real time. On the other hand, think about the families and relatives of those at Fort Hood, and the trauma and stress they must have gone through as the story changed time and time again. Competition can be healthy and make journalists strive to write the best possible story, but it can also make them careless, rushing to scoop other news sources and putting the actual truth in jeopardy.

The other portion of this story that bothered me is the media’s insistence on talking about the shooter’s faith. Upon reading his name, Nidal Hasan, it’s obvious that the man could be Muslim, but as we should all know by now, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. If there’s anything that the 9/11 attacks did, it was make us more suspicious of those of the Muslim faith. In many ways, that is understandable, but honestly, it’s a prejudiced, stereotypical way of looking at things. As soon as Hasan’s name was released to the public, comments on news websites began talking about terroristic intentions. Of course, the news organizations did nothing to stifle this talk and let it go on, even writing stories themselves calling Hasan a “devout Muslim.” We still don’t know if that has much to do with the story, but by mentioning it so often and so haphazardly, it has put the man in a light for which he may not belong. He definitely did something wrong and horrendous, but by mentioning his faith so readily, we run the risk of harming the entire Muslim community as well.

In many ways, the media has done some outstanding work with this story and informing the public, but they’ve also failed. I can only hope that the mistakes of the journalists covering the Fort Hood tragedy will serve to teach future writers (and the mistaken journalists as well) how not to behave and contribute to more sound coverage if, god forbid, something like this should happen again.

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Robert Rich is a senior journalism major at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from Westwood High School in 2006. He can be reached via e-mail at robert.rich@mail.utexas.edu