A buddy of mine from my last command was killed on leave yesterday during a police chase, and now the article is eating up my FB page. The one thing that caught my attention: WTF, no. Said Petty Officer had orders to Virginia that he was non-plussed about and I doubt those changed in int last 33 days since I saw him last. And his would-have-been brother in law is on my feed as well. Just, fuck. If TIIC are trying to sell a story and make it as sad as possible (and given the cop involved may have instigated the suspect and led to this accident, it's pretty maddening enough), as least have the facts be TRUE.
I'm finding that when the news reports anything about something I know a little about, whether it be airplanes falling out of the sky because of a few tower closures or automatic revolvers or my company's industry, they get so much stuff wrong that I assume all that stuff I don't know much about is probably just as incorrect.
This is something that's been irritating for a while...the Sandy Hook incident in particular had everyone and their mother rushing to cover the story and we had five different stories about his motives and weapons, depending on what news outlet you watched. Sucks that sensationalism takes predicent over reporting actual facts these days.
The mantra used to be, "Get it right. Get it first." Increasingly those two sentences are reversed or the first one is ignored altogether.
When the news reports on things I know about, I'm shocked often enough by the things they get wrong to really make me skeptical about their reporting on things I know little or nothing about.