First of all I would like to praise all the first responders and medical teams for their superb work, and to express our love and support for all those touched by the horrific bombings in Boston.
However, I do have some serious questions in the aftermath.
Perhaps our homeland security forces and our press might have learnt something from this experience?
The act itself was horrific, live and direct, yet the response seemed to be panicked and horribly heavy handed.
We had the press go into an absolute feeding frenzy demonstrating shockingly egregious reporting.
We then had images broadcast world wide of "persons of interest" by the security services.
Further murder, a major gunfight, resulting in a locked down major city with enough arms on display to start a major war.
We then have a senator calling for the suspension of constitutional rights of one of our citizens.
Never mind the frothing crazy and racism coming out of many fringe media outlets.
I'm just wondering if old fashioned investigation methods and a little discretion might have resulted in a cleaner result, it would have course resulted in lower viewing figures and fewer column inches.
Am I the only one thinking that by publishing photos of the main suspects on national and international TV might just induce panic in the suspects? Perhaps a little discrete questioning of local people, or a search on the internet might have lead to a cleaner arrest? Have a look first, then if you cannot find them publish the photos?
The pressure for instant resolution in the insta-need society are very high; but do we really need to go into panic mode?
Perhaps all involved need to take a step back and review the response and rather than increase the fear and terror by having a reassuring and measured response; for example:
A media that helps rather than hinders, speculation is the refuge of the ill informed. It is not a TV show that needs the ratings otherwise it gets cancelled.
A directive to our security agencies to review their actions and improve how they investigate and deal with the media without letting the suspects know the posse is on their tail.
That certain politicians and talking heads learn that silence is indeed golden when you have nothing useful to contribute other than to assuage your own ego/hatred.
I hope some lessons have been learnt, and perhaps patience and intelligence are key in this type of situation; at least this time [so far] we haven't decided to invade another country.
I'm trying to avoid all the speculative reasoning as to "why" and to definitely avoid the hate spewing segments of our population.