So many tragedies have happened within the last couple months. There are ongoing bombings in Syria, which are killing thousands of children, Nice, France was just attacked on Bastille Day, there were shootings of police officers in Dallas, Texas. Tragedies continue to strike, and the media continues to be our main source of receiving information on these tragedies. My heart breaks every time, but the media does not mend the broken heart, it adds to it.
I am a girl who uses social media all the time. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I watch the news and follow the latest stories closely. But I know that the information I receive is not always accurate.
This is why it is so painful when terrorism and tragic events happen. People lose family members and friends. Numbers are important. Numbers of people affected, numbers of lives lost, numbers of who is missing, and who is accounted for in situations such as these that are happening.
Even so, the media will choose what to show viewers and what not to show. Sometimes, this is a good thing, but sometimes, this is a terrible thing. While no one person or news station is expected to have the accurate information right away when something happens, they are expected to release accurate information when they have it.
I can not tell you how many times I discuss something major that has happened with someone and we have different information. It's so hard because there are so many different news sources.
Stories are usually exaggerated. When it comes to terrorism, each story is terrible, and can not exactly be exaggerated. But news stations sometimes still choose to downplay a situation or change certain facts in stories so that the situation will seem different.
A few days ago, there was a storm that hit in my hometown. The news team exaggerated about how bad the storm was, and while some parts were bad, I was able to get around to where I needed to be much easier than they had made it out to be.
That is more acceptable to me. A storm is different than an act of terrorism. The media needs to stop deciding to only include certain facts to make a story seem one way, and make sure that they include all the ACCURATE facts that they can.
I am not saying that every news station or online source does this. What I'm saying is, there are certain boundaries that need to be followed when we as a nation need to be informed of something so large as these tragedies.
I honestly believe that this is why we have so much discord in our world right now. The media will not show you that in Dallas, cops were helping guard Black Lives Matter protesters and that the protestors were assisting the cops in finding the shooter. The media will create teams to fight against each other and will pinpoint one team of people against the other. Maybe not purposely. But it will happen nonetheless.
It is time to get the facts straight. If we take a look at what's really happening in the world right now, we can't mess around. Facts have to be accurate in situations like this. And in tragedies like this, we don't have time to be picking sides and fighting against each other. We need to come together and allow all of us to mourn together and to support the victims together. But it's really hard to do that when the victims and villains are chosen by the media instead of the facts.