{"id":838,"date":"2013-04-17T01:35:36","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T23:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=838"},"modified":"2015-04-27T21:05:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T19:05:12","slug":"film-at-11-and-around-the-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/film-at-11-and-around-the-clock\/","title":{"rendered":"Film at 11, and around the clock"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sure you’ve heard that on Monday afternoon, local time, horrible things happened in Boston. Near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, two bombs went off<\/span>, killing three people and hitting perhaps 200 more with shrapnel<\/span>. Doctors have said they “had to finish the work of the bombs”, performing amputations on a number of<\/span> the injured. Horrible, horrible stuff.<\/p>\n

That’s about the extent<\/span> of what’s known as I write this, a day and a half after it happened. The news can still be reported in a single paragraph.<\/p>\n

No crackpot<\/span>, no terrorist organization, no anarchist movement has (so far) phoned in to claim responsibility. Very little is known about the bombs and how they were set off<\/span>. There is nothing more to report. You can go back to what you were doing. We’ll alert<\/span> you when further facts become known. Sorry to interrupt, but we thought you’d want to know.<\/p>\n

That’s what would have been reported in the old days, before 24-hour cable news networks. You’d be in the middle of watching, say, The Waltons<\/i><\/a>, and text would start crawling<\/span> across the bottom of your screen \u2014 something like: “Bombs at Boston Marathon kill two, injure dozens. Motive still unknown.” After several minutes of that, the program would be interrupted by a “special bulletin”, no more than a minute or so in length, that stated a few facts, referred you to an upcoming newscast<\/span>, and left you with the words “Film at 11”. Back to The Waltons<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The same three seconds<\/h2>\n

If all your station<\/span> broadcasts is news, however, and there is no news, you’re in a bind<\/span>. You’ve got airtime<\/span> to fill, and like it or not, you’ve got to stick with<\/span> the story. People are tuning in<\/span> at random<\/span> times and want to know what’s going on. If you’ve looked away to cover<\/span> other stories, viewers will turn to your competitors<\/span>.<\/p>\n

So obviously, you repeat the sparse<\/span> information you’ve got and show the same three seconds of slow-motion footage<\/span> as often as you can. But that doesn’t get you very far.<\/p>\n

Media abhors a vacuum<\/span>, and without facts to go on<\/span>, all that’s left is speculation. That started as soon as the news stations could get their reporters on the line<\/span> and guests into the studio.<\/p>\n

Words were parsed<\/span>. The police had spoken cautiously<\/span> and neutrally of “explosions”. That could include causes like a ruptured gas line<\/span>. Then Joe Biden \u2014 who was also getting his information from TV \u2014 used the word “bombing”. If this was a bombing, the talking heads<\/span> in the studio surmised<\/span>, then the motive could have been terrorism, and if terrorists were at work, then this could be a terrorist attack. “Simultaneous attacks are a hallmark<\/span> of Al Qaeda,” former congresswoman Jane Harman reminded viewers on CNN. Were other cities also at risk?<\/p>\n

Weak sauce<\/h2>\n

The “coverage<\/span>” continued for hours, with almost no facts being learned, but with plenty of speculation. Vague and contradictory<\/span> reports of a third “incendiary device<\/span>” in a library across town<\/span> being subjected to a “controlled detonation” gave fuel to<\/span> 9\/11<\/a>-style conspiracy theories<\/a>. But without further carnage<\/span>, it became clear that as terrorist attacks go<\/span> \u2014 and this is in no way meant to trivialize what happened to the victims \u2014 this one was weak sauce<\/span>. The culprit<\/span> almost had to be a domestic<\/span> terrorist, acting alone or in a small group.<\/p>\n

Why bomb the Boston Marathon? Was the date special \u2014 the anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War, for example, which began nearby? Was it an echo of the bombing of the federal building<\/span> in Oklahoma City, which itself had occurred on the anniversary of a government assault<\/span> on a cult<\/span> in Waco, Texas? Was it a statement against gun control, happening near the anniversary of the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres? Was it a protest against federal income taxes, coming on the deadline<\/span> for filing<\/span> tax returns<\/span>?<\/p>\n

Nobody knows, and we don’t know either. For now, it’s time to turn off the news. As they used to say after the special bulletin, “We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress<\/span>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sure you’ve heard that on Monday afternoon, local time, horrible things happened in Boston. Near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, two bombs went off, killing three people and hitting perhaps 200 more with shrapnel. Doctors have said they “had to finish the work of the bombs”, performing amputations on a number of the injured. Horrible, horrible stuff. … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[38,33,119,35,86],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1629,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions\/1629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}