Leave out important details, control the story.

 Christopher Riley
cr451912@ohio.edu
3000riley.c@gmail.com

Journalists have an obligation to seek the truth. It is important for them to understand that the public has a right to that truth. Too often we see journalists report video or images in a manipulated manor that helps them advance their own motives or beliefs. There are many reasons why this could happen. Are they being paid by specific political bodies? Or do they simply want their own opinions to be the common ones among society? The bottom line is stories get manipulated through visual communication way too often and something must be done about it. It violates many ethical codes of journalism.

 

Photo courtesy of SOTT.net

 

This image is a prime example of video or imagery being manipulated to control the story. Nick Sandmann was immediately vilified as racist and privileged for this simple image. It is because left leaning news networks controlled the story by not covering the whole story and only showing the public the part that makes the conservative look bad. A deeper dive into this story and fulfilling their duty to seek the truth would have prevented this situation from escalating the way it did. The way the story was covered made Sandmann public enemy number one. His only crime was smiling.

Here is an article from Fox News that helps puts CNN’s coverage of the situation into perspective: https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnns-joe-lockhart-attacks-sandmann-as-snot-nose-entitled-kid-following-networks-defamation-suit

CNN would later add more to the story as it developed. Here is an updated article as more video became available: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/us/maga-hat-teens-native-american-second-video/index.html

 

Photo courtesy of Newmansociety.org

 

In the end, CNN settled a defamation lawsuit with Sandmann. However, the damage has already been done. The problem presented here is that with CNN jumping the gun in order to control the story; the public opinion of Nick Sandmann had already been solidified. This is the danger of trusting viral videos. They almost never provide clear context of the video. We only get to see mere moments and not the events that lead up to the situation in the first place. This happens with more than just political confrontations, we also see it with encounters between maskers and un-maskers, customers, and associates, and in plenty of road rage videos. When videos and images of confrontations go viral with limited information and major news networks only reporting a part of the story whether intentional or not; the story has already manipulated the public which is a major violation of ethics in journalism. This kind of reporting must stop, or it will divide our country even farther than it already has been.