ARUNGA: Merciless media coverage of terror attacks needs to stop

Medics arrive at the scene of the suspected explosion at an Ariana Grande pop concert in Manchester, Britain, on May 22, 2017. PHOTO | PAUL ELLIS | AFP

What you need to know:

  • People have been tweeting Ariana Grande, whose concert it was, about how the attack is her fault – even though there is no way she would have known about the attack, or wanted it to happen.
  • And in a new low, this morning, people have been posting fake tweets about missing persons, completely taking away from the people who actually need help.

What happened in Manchester is another in a long string of terrifying attacks worldwide. What makes this one even more atrocious, in the words of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is that this particular assault targeted children coming from what should have been one of the best nights of their lives. This is an act of ‘sickening cowardice,’ resembling Kenya’s own Westgate attack, during which children and parents attending an event on the rooftop were slaughtered mercilessly.

The Manchester incident is already bad enough as is, but now complaints are filtering through about how the British media is dealing with those who are aggrieved, injured, or bereaved. I was listening to BBC Radio yesterday, and they were talking to many people, among them victims, parents who were panicking about their unaccounted-for children and witnesses. Everyone sounded traumatised, sympathetic, or grateful. But this tweet gave me pause:

In this thread, this Twitter user, a mental health advocate, talks about going through her own traumatic experience four years ago, and how unfeeling the media were then, too. She talks about how they would pose as friends of the family to come get a story, or offer to pay for the story, all the while telling them to make the story more colourful, like some macabre spectacle.

And it gets uglier. People have been tweeting Ariana Grande, whose concert it was, about how the attack is her fault – even though there is no way she would have known about the attack, or wanted it to happen. And in a new low, this morning, people have been posting fake tweets about missing persons, completely taking away from the people who actually need help, such as this one:

This makes the whole situation even more deplorable. Not only have children died, some as young as eight years old, who, as I can imagine, begged their parents to go to the concert, and were looking forward to this for a long time; but on top of that, some of these people cannot be found.

JUST A PAYCHECK

The media is using this opportunity to get a paycheck. On top of that, people are pointing fingers at unnecessary places; and on top of that, people are taking this opportunity to seek attention and do absolutely nothing to help – in fact, they’re making everything worse, because now we are focused on the trolls instead of on those who have actually been hurt by this – who are still searching for their loved ones amidst the barrage of tweets.

The suicide bomber who did this is a monster unto himself, of course, but even worse are the people who have shown such a lack of sensitivity – indeed, almost an attitude of delight, at this unfortunate time. There are monsters among us and beside us, even after the tragedy, which almost makes it that much more tragic. Journalists have a responsibility to the news they carry, and the people they carry it to. And these very same people in our society need to become more conscious about what is permissible – which is everything – and what is right.

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