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Oct
31
Don’t Tase Me, YouTube
Filed Under Vlogalism
The famous “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” video clip of University of Florida student Andrew Myer at a John Kerry speech is maybe not exactly what it seems. Or, at least, the video doesn’t tell the whole story. Maybe not even half of it.
Positively shocking, isn’t it?
Writing in the Chistian Science Monitor today, Dennis Jett, Dean of the International Center at the University of Florida, sheds new light on the whole incident in a piece that is aimed at criticizing the media’s handling of the story.
What the video doesn’t show, and what went largely unreported in the first days after the video hit the web, is the fact that Myer had caused a disturbance earlier in the day on the campus (with promises of more to come that night at the Kerry speech). Even more important, however, is the fact that Myer had already disrupted the Kerry speech even before the beginning of the now famous video clip.
Jett writes in the Christian Science Monitor:
What was not on the YouTube videos was the fact that the student disrupted the speech twice. After Kerry had responded to numerous questions, I announced that one final one would be taken from the microphone on my right. The student then grabbed the microphone on the left and loudly demanded that he be allowed to ask a question. When a female police officer intervened and tried to escort him out, he broke away and continued shouting. At that point, Kerry said he would take the student’s question, but would respond first to the questioner who was supposed to have been last. As he finished answering that question the famous videos began.
As I mentioned long ago, video adds a natural credibility to a “report.” If you are seeing something with your own eyes, it makes it hard to question its veracity. Because of this, the potential for distortion actually becomes greater.
And so as more and more vloggers take up the role of “citizen journalist,” we are likely to see more and more distortion. Some of this distortion will be intentional; some will be unintentional.
Jett rightly criticizes the mainstream media for not getting out all the facts. Most simply jumped on a vlogger’s video from YouTube and ran with it “as is.”
The mainstream media could take this incident as a lesson for how to handle “news” in this video blogging era, but something tells me that most probably won’t. At least not for a while.
While that is most certainly a criticism of “professional journalism” today, it has to be said that we, the consumers of the news, are also culpable. Our insistence on having everything now! now! now! is what leads us to take the first version of a story as the only version. It seems we simply don’t have the patience to wait out the truth.
If we get our news from YouTube or other such sites with “user generated content,” we shouldn’t be surprised when we learn we didn’t actually get the whole story. Sadly, some of us won’t ever learn we never got the whole story. Even sadder, some of us won’t even care.
LINKS:
Jett’s Piece at the Christian Science Monitor
Official University of Florida Report on the Incident