Tag Archives: MH370

Mudslide rips through Washington

Posted in Uncategorized by

Darrington might be the smallest town in the world making a huge impact on social media. That’s because many have been affected by a major mudslide along the banks of the Stillaguamish River, killing at least 21 people at press time.

As seen in that post, the author used #530slide. This hashtag was really how I found out about this story when the news broke. When I got up the morning that happened, it was trending on Twitter. However, for many, that hasn’t been enough.
“I haven’t been following the Mudslide that much,” said freshman accounting major Jacob Wiseman. “I feel like it doesn’t get coverage.”
Another tragedy is what has been grabbing the headlines, but one student says that this one hits home.
“I think this should be getting way more coverage than the Malaysian Airlines story. We don’t know exactly what happened to MH370, but we do know that (21) people are confirmed dead,” said junior broadcast journalism major Giovanni Mio.
The local news networks in Washington have been doing a fantastic job of informing their people. One reporter went as far to give a visual demonstration to really show what has happened. This story was later posted on USA Today

Another toll rising is the emotional one. Thinglink is a site that is a cooler version of tagging someone on Facebook. With it, one can tag stories, quotes, and additional data. The link above gives a lot of additional information that I otherwise would not have known.

A trends graph based on times tweeted and location.

This map, courtesy of Trendsmap.co, shows how much the hashtag #530slide has been used based on location. In the Washington area and many major news cities, this is something people are following very closely as the death toll continues to rise.


Although it is amazing to see both the beauty and destruction in nature, thousands from across the globe are showing their support.

Follow the #530slide hashtag on Twitter for more information. My thoughts and prayers are with all that have been affected by this tragedy.

OPINION: Why the Malaysia coverage flopped

Posted in Journalism, JRN 305, media coverage, opinion, social media, tragedy, Uncategorized by

The news is out that flight MH370 from Malaysia Airlines is gone. There is no reason to believe that there are any survivors, but one thing that did thrive is CNN’s ratings. Unfortunately for CNN, their coverage was bogus.
Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart said that CNN’s mentality behind covering this was, “F#&K it, let’s go nuts.” The news network delivered, focusing more on graphics, conspiracy theories, and telling viewers what a plane looks like, rather than the actual news at hand.
I understand that as a news network, the Malaysia story is something that is going to draw an audience, because people care about it. It may not have an impact on everybody’s everyday life, but the suspense pulls you in.
But to say that the plane was pulled into a black hole? I second Jon Stewart.
Image courtesy of the Huffington Post
Fox News or MSNBC did not seem to do much better. Fox News went on to bash CNN for their news coverage. It seems clear to me that networks are focusing more on making money than actually reporting the news. There are times in the media where no news is no news. In some ways I applaud Fox News for calling CNN out on their nonsense, but also wish they did not over-analyze.
Did Social Media do it right? According to Topsy, from when the news broke that the plane went missing to when we learned of its ultimate demise, there have been nearly four million tweets mentioning Flight MH370. I also noticed a trend. It looks like less people were tweeting or retweeting posts in between the news of it going missing and the announcement that the plane was gone. To me, that shows that people stopped tuning in to theories that they did not believe were reasonable. As a human, I want the facts to come from reliable sources, and try to stay away from listening to 20 different theories. As a prospective journalist, my job as a reporter is to get the news from those sources, and report it. I don’t get paid to broadcast my opinion (nor at all yet, I might add) because I am not an analyst.
One organization that got it right was the Washington Post, who although they gave various possibilities, they did not dumb down their audience by proposing that there’s a black hole somewhere. There are plenty of possibilities, and at the time I post this, we still don’t have the answers.
Overall, many news organizations focused more on theory than reporting on what they knew. It is fine to have theories, but they should not make up the centerpiece of a broadcast news program. Research, interview, and get whatever information is needed to report the facts. Organizations need to realize that hardly anyone cares about who reported the news first. Instead, they want the news to be informative, and not about black hole theories.