SUPER SCOOPS

Super Scoops

Breaking News is breaking faster and getting chunkier. The sightings and the search for the brothers who carried out the Boston horrors is the latest example. BBC and CNN that I check everyday for news stopped the world and stayed on ‘live’ repetition, twenty-four hour, second by second live news of the shut down of Boston and the search for the terrorists.

Everyone wants to be the first with a scoop whether that person is on the scene or not, and whether he has a way of knowing the accuracy of what he reports. Face Book ‘posters’ and Twitterers were out there quick and fast. When it was reported wrongly that the police had apprehended a dark skinned person I could excuse that. It was night and the sunglass-wearing policemen could have mistaken the white boys for brown boys. But when super sleuths, not only amateur but stupid too, came up with an Indian name, and I will have you know it was not even a Red Indian name,they outdid themselves. They did some serious harm to the Sunils of the world.

Everyone wants the universe to know ‘you heard this from ME first’. We are moving into instant and speedy breaking news, mobile phone style, and often speculated reality.

What next? I saw it before it happened? Shades of Minority Report?