Social
Media and Truth
As I stated in my
previous post, I do not usually watch the news.
I feel like there are too many sad stories being broadcast and I would
rather pick and choose the news that I engage in by reading it off the internet
or on social networks. The social
network that I used most often is Facebook, so that is where I usually stay in
tuned with the world, from what my friends are sharing on my timeline.
While
I was reading statuses today I came across an article about a Detroit man’s missing
son being found in his homes basement.
The boy was found in Wednesday and his stepmother Monique
Dillard-Bouthell has been arrested for a bench warrant on an unrelated
incident. The boy, Charlie Bouthell V,
12, was found behind a barricade. His father,
also named Charlie Bouthell, was told about the discovery of his son while in
an interview live on air with Nancy Grace.
Grace questioned the father, “How could your son be alive in your
basement?” and a shocked Bouthell IV responded, “I have no idea” (WXYZ,
2014). The mystery of the young child’s finding has
stirred up many questions and the father has not answered any more questions
and has hired a lawyer. Bouthell IV
states that there is no way that his son could’ve been in his basement for the
two weeks he was missing because he has been in his basement several times and
Detroit Police and the FBI have checked also.
The Detroit Police have also confirmed this statement saying that they
checked four times even one with a cadaver dog, with no sign of the child. The police said that he was found barricaded
behind boxes and a 55-gallon drum, which causes the suspicion of whether or not
someone was hiding him. Detroit Police
Chief, James Craig reported, “There’s no way he could have erected this makeshift
are of concealment. It would be hard for
me to sit here and tell you that someone didn’t know that Charlie was there” (WXYZ,
2014).
This
information was reported on HLN’s show Nancy Grace, and then repeated on 19
Action News, Cleveland’s website. I
believe that all of the information on the subject is truthful, mostly because
it was on a news station’s site, but also because I have read the same
information on multiple news sites. I
think that there are times when the news that is found on social sites is
reliable. When you are finding
information given by national news sites, their information is usually credible
because they are a major news source for society. In Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age
if Information Overload, they mention social media sites as being a way to get
news in different forms, like in blogs.
When referring to Twitter or social networking sites Kovach and
Rostenstiel note that, “they are ways of conveying information, but they do not
dictate the nature of the content conveyed” (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2010).
References
WXYZ. (2014). HLN'S Nancy
Grace, via CNN: Stepmother in custody after missing Detroit boy found in
basement. Retrieved from Website http://www.19actionnews.com/story/25877524/dad-told-on-live-tv-missing-son-found-alive
Kovach,
B. and Rosenstiel, T. (2010). Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of
Information Overload. New
York, NY: Bloomsbury.
