Journalism is an instance of text, audio, of
video that informs the public about notable stories in society. While there are
concrete forms of journalism, such as newspapers, television stations and news
websites, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have in recent years become
much more prominent in the field of journalism. On July 7th, of
2016, there was an attack on the police force of Dallas, Texas, during a
protest against police brutality. Men with sniper rifles shot 11 police
officers, killing five of them, from an elevated point about the city streets.
The city was in a state in panic and a giant manhunt began to find the shooters.
While this was all going on the Dallas Police Department tweeted a picture of a
man who they said was a top suspect, with the caption, “This is one of our suspects. Please help us find him!”
The only problem was that the man that they tweeted the picture of was in fact
a completely innocent civilian, who, with a single tweet, became one of the
most wanted men in the entire world. Eventually press was released saying that
he was innocent, but for a while the mans life was put in danger. Even after
his innocence was proven he received numerous death threats. The moral of the
story is, even though technically the tweet was a form of journalism, it was
not well informed, thus putting an innocent mans life in danger. Not all
journalism is good journalism, much of it is biased and uninformed, so one must
take everything that they hear with a grain of salt, because just because one
hears something doesn’t mean its true.
News
Article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/08/during-deadly-dallas-shooting-confusion-swirled-around-armed-man-carrying-a-rifle/
