I am a very fact-driven person. I want to know the facts of a situation, and I want to know as many of them and with as much details as possible. This is especially true with hot news items, and even more increased when it comes to something that may have a direct impact on my life. This Monday’s catastrophe on campus was no exception. I woke up to a text message from my roommate informing me that class was cancelled for the morning, but I didn’t know the whole story. Upon investigation of the facts, the story just kept pouring and developing. As the day went on I progressively obsessed over new details that would be released. I never dreamed that there would come a line where I could learn too much about a story, but that day came.
The more time that progressed, the more in-depth the news went with the story. It even got to the point where if one was interested, they could listen to the original 911 call on youtube or watch the police raid the dorm room in the towers. It was as if you were given a chance to even live the whole entire situation. It surprised me with how chilling that realization was. I thought I wanted that much information as I am a pretty fact-driven and nosy person, but even for me the coverage went deeper than normal I thought.
Is there a line in how far a story can go? There are extremely positive outcomes for having nothing covered up or hidden from the public, but I believe there are also lasting repercussions of making everything in an investigation open for anyone to find. I think it will be interesting to see how much farther social media and journalism in converged.
This whole week has been a haunting time at UCF, it is terrible that someone felt so low that they took their own life but I am also extremely grateful that more lives were spared.