Fort Hood Twitter Atrocity
Paul Carr’s righteous TechCrunch contrarian rant is one that’s wary of — weary of? — ‘citizen journalists’ with cell phones and Twitter. His case in point, the Fort Hood shootings:
[T]he first news and analysis out of the base didn’t come from the experts. Nor did it come from the 24-hour news media, or even from dedicated military blogs – but rather from the Twitter account of one Tearah Moore, a soldier from Linden, Michigan who is based at Fort Hood, having recently returned from Iraq. [...]
There surely can’t be a human being left in the civilised world who doesn’t know that cellphones must be switched off in hospitals, and yet not only did Moore leave hers on but she actually used it to photograph patients, and broadcast the images to the world. Just think about that for a second. Rather than offering to help the wounded, or getting the hell out of the way of those trying to do their jobs, Moore actually pointed a cell-phone at a wounded soldier, uploaded it to twitpic and added a caption saying that the victim “got shot in the balls”.
Her behaviour had nothing to do with getting the word out; it wasn’t about preventing harm to others, but rather a simple case of – as I said two weeks ago [link] – “look at me looking at this.”
His points are good ones, and they come tumbling out. He asks, for all the talk about “the world watching,” did social media do any good for the people of Iran? His answer, an emphatic, no!
Despite a slew of YouTube videos and a couple of thousand foreign Twitter users turning their avatar green and pretending to be in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still in power. It’s astonishing, really. Despite how successful ten million actual voters marching through Washington, London and other major cities in 2003 were in stopping the invasion of Iraq, a bit of entirely virtual cyber-posturing by foreigners didn’t lead to real change in Iran.
And so it was at Fort Hood. For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.
What’s most alarming about Moore’s behaviour is that she probably thought she was doing the right thing. Certainly, looking at her MySpace page and her Twitter account (before the army finally forced her to lock it down) we see the portrait of a patriot. Someone who clearly cares a great deal about others, and who – despite the rhetorical question “remind me why I joined the army again” on her profile – is proud to serve her country. In tweeting from the scene, and calling out the media for not reporting the rumours from inside the base, I’m sure she genuinely believed she was helping get the real truth out, and making an actual difference.
He makes good points, even as he compares a generation growing up with social media to Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment. He concludes by urging us to watch the video above. And after it he asks that we watch the “far more terrifying” video of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan.
I did.
If you watch, even if you’ve seen it before, Carr asks that you bear this in mind:
[T]he cameraman was not a professional reporter, but rather an ordinary person, just like the victim. And what did he do when he saw a young girl bleeding to death? Did he run for help, or try to assist in stemming the bleeding? No he didn’t.
Instead he pointed his camera at her and recorded her suffering, moving in closer to her face for her agonising final seconds. For all of our talk of citizen journalism, and getting the truth out, the last thing that terrified girl saw before she closed her eyes for the final time was some guy pointing a cameraphone at her.
He doesn’t embed. He links. I won’t. You should read his post. It’s the third in a series and a rant in every sense of the word. But it’s a very wise, important, and worthy one.
9 Responses to “Fort Hood Twitter Atrocity”
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by TMV, Bee Your Friend. Bee Your Friend said: Fort Hood Twitter Atrocity – The Moderate Voice: Paul Carr’s righteous TechCrunch contrarian rant is one that’s.. http://bit.ly/43zmQ9 [...]
[...] Post By Google News Click Here For The Entire Article Twitter Traffic Machine Review- November 8th, 2009 | Category: Twitter Traffic Machine [...]
[...] Post By Google News Click Here For The Entire Article Best Twitter Income Systems- November 8th, 2009 | Category: Twitter Traffic Machine [...]
I think there is a false equivalence here. The Iranian protests were fundamentally about a mass political movement and getting sympathy/riling up support was absolutely crucial. That said, at the time I thought the whole “Twitter will save us” was vastly overrated, and started to write a post called “Why The Iranian Revolution Marks The Apex Of Twitter” that would have argued the reasons why instant social web networking is not effective for mass political movements…however I got busy and by the time I got around to it the issue wasn't that topical. However that argument was more about the ease that authorities can use it to spread false information making the signal to noise ratio drop to zero and causing a lack of faith in any reports.
The Fort Hood thing was entirely different. It was not a political moment, no one that wasn't involved could do anything to help and there was no reason why people had to know now except for the next of kin, etc. That usage was entirely inappropriate. To make matters worse, correct information had no utility value, but misinformation could potentially have had (has had?) grave consequences. That's because it creates a highly emotional reaction in the consumers that cannot necessarily be corrected with facts later on (see Greenwald's point).
There is also the general (and growing problem) of how that approach to life cuts people off from fully experiencing their surroundings and how it disrupts empathy formation during conversations, but that's a slightly different issue.
There also a very real phenomenon that is caused? evoked? by the one-step-removal of a camera lens. As a photographer, I've long-since noticed that events that would normally horrify me as a spectator are neutralized through the lens. I've photographed graphic, horrifying scenes in nature that I could never, ever have simply watched.
I suspect this disassociation is at play as well in other arenas — like Fort Hood.
I think this is simply part and parcel of the whole “reality tv” thing. We've become accustomed to watching this little box where people's emotions are manipulated for our entertainment. In my opinion, it does nothing beneficial to society but it does allow us to become a bit more jaded about actual suffering.
But too many people – and I have to include this site – are willing to perpetrate social fraud to play on people's emotions in order to get a bit of attention.
http://charman-anderson.com/2009/11/08/killing-…
[...] Hood, having recently returned from Iraq.Is it fair to call the tweeting of the Fort Hood shootings an atrocity, or to say that ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth? No, because individuals with [...]
i think it'd be fair to interview the woman to ask more questions and get reflections from her point of view.
The issues in Iran re camera phones and political change etc., id entirely different
as photographer of silverpoint black and white for 40 years, for me cant photograph when confronted with say, accident on roadway. Run to help. Instinct.
However, if one cannot help, because press of people, or those more qualified on scene, I can imagine someone recording the scene via notes, camera, etc
I would imagine any photos this woman has of the scene will now become critical evidence.
dr.e