Tragedy In Real Time: Living A Terrible Week, Vicariously
In Texas, veteran Bill Warren lowers a flag to half-staff in memory of victims from the West Fertilizer Co. explosion last week. The nation has absorbed the past six days of nonstop tragedy and relief in a firsthand-once-removed way that now defines our communal experiences.
We have imagined ourselves searching like Kelly Manning for loved ones after the explosions on Boylston Street.
We have pictured ourselves huddling in the basement like Beth and Paul Robinson and their four children as bullets and bombs fly on our own city street.
We have thought about wandering into our backyards like David Henneberry, seeing something amiss, finding something unimaginable.
We have joined Bostonians singing the national anthem at a hockey game. Sat in a car with Derrick Hurtt and daughter Khloey, watching in horror as the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explodes. Witnessed the renewed grief of Newtown parent Mark Barden as gun control legislation dies.
We absorbed these past six days in an instantaneous, nonstop, firsthand-but-once-removed way that now defines our communal experiences.
We see it all now, don't we? The boy balancing on the gate at the end of the race, moments before a kitchen pot bomb would take his life. The boat in the backyard. The boxer, now dead, in the ring. With a girl. Before it all went so terribly bad.
"Jesus, This Week," read a headline on the satirical website The Onion.
And that before the gun battle in the wee hours of Friday on the streets of Boston. Before one Boston Marathon bombing suspect was dead, and the other captured, late Friday, bleeding in Henneberry's boat.
Carolyn Kaster / AP
Mark and Jackie Barden (front) lost their 7-year-old son, Daniel, in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in December. On Wednesday, they stood with their surviving children, Natalie and James, in the White House Rose Garden with President Obama and other Newtown parents after the defeat of a bill to expand background checks on guns.
There, of course, have been awful weeks before, terrible tragedies, death, war, uncertainty, raw fear.
But this time, in our full-on, post-Sept. 11 surveillance society and freshly Twitterized media, we were able to experience each event in excruciating, exquisite detail.
Through the saturation of social media, we were also able to experience it equally, whether reporting from the streets of Boston or the scorched explosion site in Texas, from newsrooms in New York or Los Angeles or Berlin, or from our own living rooms and college dorm rooms.
This week, these awful events have cemented the reality that the media is now everyone, anyone with a computer or a smartphone, a Twitter account or a Facebook page.
The Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 was the first major news event reported largely via Facebook, with older journalists whose already outdated tactic of using a telephone enlisting the help of younger ones to reach students.
It was those students who first figured out, through a process of elimination on social media, who was dead.
Now, we sit at our kitchen tables and monitor live feeds of police scanners as they close in, and decide whether or not to open a tweeted file purporting to contain a photo of the dead suspect in a Boston morgue.
As the endless loop of the security camera video of the suspects and their homemade bombs continues to crowd our minds, the questions rain down about whether this new media world is good or bad. Whether the old media, leaning ever more heavily on the new, has been enhanced or embarrassed by it.
The questions matter. The answer is yes.
"It's important that we do this right," President Obama said Friday night. "That's why we have investigations. That's why we gather the facts. That's why we have courts. That's why we take care not to rush to judgment about the motives of these individuals, [and] certainly not about entire groups of people."
He was talking about the judicial process that now has control of the surviving but badly injured Boston Marathon bombing suspect, an ethnic Chechen of the Muslim faith.
But the president's caution was made in an age, he said, of instant reporting, tweets and blogs — a world now almost utterly unhinged from traditional notions.
"It was such a beautiful day in Boston," CBS News anchor Scott Pelley said late Friday, as he summed up the week that was with images of the sunny start of the Boston Marathon.
Before Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu and Krystle Campbell were killed. Before limbs were severed, before MIT police officer Sean Collier was slain, and before at least 14 people died in the Texas explosion.
"All in all, this has been a tough week," Obama said, as Bostonians celebrated the capture in the streets. "We have seen the character of our country."
As well as the raw, new and irresistible world of a media that now, for better or worse, belongs to us all.
1 of 15 — The first explosion at the Boston Marathon on Monday knocked down a runner nearing the finish line. Three people died and more than 100 were injured in the blast.
The first explosion at the Boston Marathon on Monday knocked down a runner nearing the finish line. Three people died and more than 100 were injured in the blast.
John Tlumacki / Boston Globe via Getty Images
2 of 15 — The second explosion happened minutes later.
The second explosion happened minutes later.
Ben Thorndike / AP
3 of 15 — A runner embraces another woman on the marathon route near Kenmore Square on Monday in Boston.
A runner embraces another woman on the marathon route near Kenmore Square on Monday in Boston.
Alex Trautwig / Getty Images
4 of 15 — Medical workers aid the injured at the finish line.
Medical workers aid the injured at the finish line.
Charles Krupa / AP
5 of 15 — A candlelight vigil is held in honor of 8-year-old Martin Richard, from Dorchester, who was killed by the explosion.
A candlelight vigil is held in honor of 8-year-old Martin Richard, from Dorchester, who was killed by the explosion.
Jared Wickerham / Getty Images
6 of 15 — A vigil at City Hall in Cambridge, Mass.
A vigil at City Hall in Cambridge, Mass.
Matt Rourke / AP
7 of 15 — A memento of flowers in a running shoe rests at a makeshift memorial in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood on Thursday.
A memento of flowers in a running shoe rests at a makeshift memorial in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood on Thursday.
Craig Ruttle / AP
8 of 15 — The usually busy Kenmore Square in Boston is deserted on Thursday during a call for "shelter-in-place" for Boston and some area communities.
The usually busy Kenmore Square in Boston is deserted on Thursday during a call for "shelter-in-place" for Boston and some area communities.
Elise Amendola / AP
9 of 15 — Police search for a suspect on Thursday in Watertown, Mass. An MIT campus police officer was shot and killed late Thursday night at the school's campus in Cambridge.
Police search for a suspect on Thursday in Watertown, Mass. An MIT campus police officer was shot and killed late Thursday night at the school's campus in Cambridge.
Mario Tama / Getty Images
10 of 15 — Members of a police S.W.A.T. team search a neighborhood in Watertown.
Members of a police S.W.A.T. team search a neighborhood in Watertown.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
11 of 15 — A woman is questioned by the Cambridge Police and other law enforcement agencies during a door-to-door search in Watertown for 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
A woman is questioned by the Cambridge Police and other law enforcement agencies during a door-to-door search in Watertown for 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
12 of 15 — Members of a police SWAT team talk to a man while conducting their search on Thursday.
Members of a police SWAT team talk to a man while conducting their search on Thursday.
13 of 15 — Police guard the entrance to Franklin Street, where the bombing suspect was discovered Friday.
Police guard the entrance to Franklin Street, where the bombing suspect was discovered Friday.
14 of 15 — A still frame from video shows Tsarnaev, visible through an ambulance window, after he was apprehended.
A still frame from video shows Tsarnaev, visible through an ambulance window, after he was apprehended.
Robert Ray / AP
15 of 15 — A crowd gathers to celebrate in the Boston Common after the marathon bombing suspect was found.
A crowd gathers to celebrate in the Boston Common after the marathon bombing suspect was found.
Aram Boghosian / Boston Globe via Getty Images