Saw this tweet come through Tweetdeck:
UPDATE: To be clear, I don’t follow that account. It was retweeted.
“Everyone should be outraged,” it said. About what? I hovered over the link and found the title of the story:
“New Hampshire police refuse to discuss apparent lynching of biracial boy.”
That is the correct way you should respond to questionable tweets in your feed. Note that at no time did I click any part of the tweet. I did not retweet it, I did not click the link.
I considered quote-tweeting it with a sarcastic comment: “About misleading headlines?”
Then I thought it would make a good blog post, so I copied a link to the tweet so I could screen grab it, and got this lovely photo right in my face:
Of course I had read about this story already from other sources. It’s terrible. But I don’t know if it’s true or not. I have no idea if that photo is real or not. My instinct these days, if you can’t tell, is to assume everything on the Internet is fake until proven otherwise. In any case I’m certainly not going to go a place called “Raw Story” to investigate it, because I’m a reasonably savvy news consumer.
I’m dubious about that photo. Where did it come from? It’s obviously not a police photo following the proper chain of evidence that would stand up in a court of law. That leaves only one thing: It came from a parent posting a picture on Facebook. Will that stand up in a court of law? Is it real? Maybe. Could it be fake? Certainly. How will we know for sure? By waiting and watching real journalists do real reporting.
Assuming it’s all true, the police, obviously–so, so obviously–are conducting an investigation. The boy is obviously–so, so obviously–underage (as are the attackers) and should not be talked about by the police in public.
I don’t know this for sure, but I would imagine the police are refusing to discuss what happened because they are professionals at their job who respect the privacy of the people involved and the integrity of their investigation. So, so obviously.
So yes, everyone *should* be outraged…
…about people spreading tweets like this around the Internet without using their brains for two seconds.
…about people spreading links to rawstory.com as if it’s a legitimate source of news.
…about people writing headlines which twist the facts to manipulate readers’ emotions.
…about people attaching horrific images to their tweets to make people react instinctively with emotion even though we have no idea if it’s real or not.
…about the huge swaths of world citizenry who do not yet understand the above simple facts of modern life, which might someday lead to the downfall of civilization.
Incidentally, Raw Story, according to Wikipedia, is “an American progressive online news organization founded in 2004.” I shouldn’t have to say this, but never get news from sites that boldly declare their partisanship.
