The manhunt for Dzhokar Tsarnaev in the early hours of April 19 was morbidly fascinating. Those of us still awake were tuned in to the Boston police scanner to listen in, Google Maps to watch along and Twitter to follow the updates. Every out-of-breath Boston accent could have been the break – resolution to the drama.
News was unfolding in real time, not dolled up by CNN or Fox. Ultimately, the Boston PD didn’t find Tsarnaev until the next day, hiding in The Slipaway II. But, for those few hours, the 80,000 people listening to the same feed as I were engrossed in the drama of the manhunt.
This spirit of participation in an event thousands of miles away is the very same that sparked the Reddit vigilantism after the Boston bombings. For the few that don’t know, Reddit is a social media site that calls itself the “front page of the internet.” A group of redditors took it upon themselves to find the bombers based on a few pictures and enterprising spirits. They took to it with great vigor, identifying several people they believed to be suspects. They found names, families, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts – all in the name of justice.
When I was listening to the scanner I felt what those redditors must have felt, a combination of anger and desire for justice.
I yearned for suspect number two to be found and I hungered for any news that would heighten the drama. I, and Reddit, forgot one thing, though. Nuance. That pesky little thing that makes us qualify and question.
It makes us think twice before we blame whole ethnic or religious groups for the actions of a few. Nuance was remarkably absent from the coverage of the tragedy in Boston. We accepted any news available, no matter how incorrect, without question.
The time after a tragedy is so often one of reflection. We remember those lost and marvel at the spirit and resilience of the city of Boston. We must also reflect inward, at our society’s pathological need for news. Everyone wants answers, especially clean ones.
The need for this is all too evident in the New York Daily News’ brush-up of a photo to remove a woman’s bloody, butchered leg. Clean answers, though, are unfortunately all too rare. In the absence of definition we need subtlety, nuance. The ability to pause before making a bold claim. We, as a nation, need to the most basic of acts – stop and think.
One of the most disappointing things I heard about this country came immediately after the bombing. A young Saudi national at the marathon, upon hearing the explosion, ran away. He was tackled and held by an American citizen, questioned by the FBI and then let go. Is this how the people of the United States act? This man committed no crime but being Arab near a bomb. The civilian who tackled the Saudi man probably believed he was helping solve the crime, just as Reddit did. Neither of them thought about the undue harm of their actions. They made quick, ill-advised, judgments that were categorically false.
The Boston man, Reddit and I all had three things in common those few days, we forgot about the need for nuance. We accepted what we saw on Twitter, watched on CNN, read in the Globe – CNN’s premature report of an arrest comes to mind. Everyone had theories for who did it and why, without ever taking the time to think.
We now know it was a pair of disaffected brothers whose ethnically Chechen parents emigrated from Kyrgyzstan. We do not know their motives or their grievances against the US. We know very little, and maybe that is the way it should be.
Matejka is a senior majoring in international studies.
