What
is true about almost every story that reaches the top of the
news headlines list is that there is more
to them than
initially meets the eye.
Are
you
among the majority of folks who follow big human interest stories
purely for their entertainment value or, like me, have
you grown analytically
pessimistic about the voracity of all media
reportage?
If it's the latter, then
"What's wrong with this picture?"
has become
your
TV news-watching mantra.
A case
in point: the Balloon Boy saga that
quickly morphed from live
national coverage of a
tragedy-in-progress into a "reality TV"
hoax. In its aftermath,
however, a family was left broken
and in need of emotional counseling and, perhaps, incarceration. Unnecessary risk and expense
were incurred by
rescuers and law enforcement officers as a
result of their involvement in this false alarm
that, we can only hope, will not jeopardize response times in future interventions.
Tiger
Woods' crash, another story for which the
picture was initially way out of focus, is an
example of how a 911 call can quickly turn into something
very different. Whatever
drama was unfolding inside the Woods' home in the wee
hours of that Friday morning it somehow
precipitated the use of Tiger's Escalade.
Of course, his relatively minor injuries were
initially reported as "serious" in the first
wave of news bulletins but, fortunately, Crash Dummies suffer no permanent injuries.
Nonetheless, yet another family was left broken
and in need of emotional counseling.
Keeping
in mind that Woods amassed his fortune
by suppressing adrenaline's potentially negative
influence over his game, notice what happened
when even a cool cucumber like Tiger Woods
undertook to drive an extremely safe vehicle
under the influence of adrenaline. Now
imagine the myriad possibilities of injury or death
inherent in the dispatching of dozens of less-safe air
and land vehicles
-- all manned by
adrenaline-influenced personnel -- in response to
the Balloon Boy 911 false alarm.
It is
disturbing that the Secret Service, once the
epitome of
"What's wrong with this picture?"
protectionism, somehow got caught up in the
glamorous heat of the moment at what they too casually
believed was a locked-down White
House. Perhaps they should, as part of their
training, be sent to practice their trade at red
carpet events like academy awards
ceremonies and major film debuts. A
mandatory stint as a bouncer at a night club door would
better prepare them to maintain security at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue.
Regardless of the party crashers' award-winning acting
and adrenaline-suppression abilities,
the guys in the very dark glasses and Brooks
Brothers suits were, nonetheless, duped by
these "reality TV" star wannabes -- just as
their civilian counterparts had been taken in
by the Balloon Boy Family.
Sadly, Facebook and Twitter have replaced the
old-fashioned press to a very great extent.
Today's mainstream media reports are filled with
quotes and stories that were originally
published on the Internet and many TV news
programs' coverage are replete with video footage originally posted on YouTube.
The Secret Service and the
mainstream media both need to adopt a simple
web-based
strategy: the entering of a password.
Mistype it two or three times and you're out -- regardless of how
photogenic, well-dressed, well-known or able to putt under pressure
you might be.
Have
Secret Service agents and journalists become just as jaded as
almost everyone else from students to prominent elected
officials? Is having virtual stuff like YouTube
and cell phone photos/videos constantly at their
fingertips somehow preventing these people from asking
"What's wrong with this picture?"
in the
all-too-real world?
As people constantly remind each other that
"You can't believe
anything you see online and on TV,"
one might
think that the opposite would be true.
Obviously, like
nearly every story that reaches the top of the
news headlines list,
there was significantly
more to these than initially met the eye.