Since Tuesday, I have been covering the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde for National Review. It’s a task that has led me to many corners of the Internet, looking for information to piece together events and inform readers about this tragedy. Early on, I discovered that social media was a better bet for getting information quickly than traditional newswire services were.
The names of children who died, for instance, were posted on Twitter hours before being reported in the press. I also discovered a video of the shooter, Salvador Ramos, entering the school’s western door, on Facebook — as well as another of parents pleading with cops to enter the school. I further learned that Ramos had crashed his pickup truck in a ditch close to the school from a tweet by a reporter on the ground, a material fact later added to the official account by investigators. Ramos’s social-media content, though deleted, was immediately reposted by other users, giving me valuable information.
These social-media posts carried the same information later reported by established outlets long before such outlets did. They helped me more than reports from the AP, AFP, Reuters, local outlets, or anybody else — even the eyewitnesses with whom I spoke — and probably helped those reporters as well. Instead of merely or even primarily consulting them, I plan to jump to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram the next time there’s a big event, hearing from eyewitnesses on the ground as they blast information off their mobile phones. Their hashtags are good primary sources for journalists to gain real-time unabridged information about an event. Gone are the days of Woodward and Bernstein meeting ‘Deep Throat’ in an underground parking garage to gather the latest gossip or bombshells on Watergate. Much reporting nowadays often begins with such social-media leads, which are then confirmed through official channels before being published. As I write, I am investigating several.
To be fair, social media has attracted some fair criticism, recently, and there is much garbage on the platforms — sweeping, inflammatory, half-baked, useless, and straight-up incorrect posts — that I had to navigate. The faux activism of keyboard warriors, some old enough to know better, is rather unfortunate, and is a sad commentary on the toxicity of a hyperconnectivity and its immediacy. I’d still prefer to read my news in articles rather than tweets. Nonetheless, it must be admitted: Social media has truly democratized information in a manner that can be helpful to people. We should not forget that in our critiques.