I watched another violent breaking news story today. Four Oakland cops were shot, three were killed as was the suspect. I’m not sure when I originally got the news but it was sometime early this afternoon and actually from the SFgate.com which is somewhat amazing. I then started following it on twitter and the feeling I got was horrible. It was similar to the way I felt after watching the story unfold of the slow speed chase of the white bentley in L.A. a couple months ago which ended with the driver committing suicide.
It seems as if it is actually harder emotionally to watch a story unfold or to “investigate” it yourself, than it is to just have it quickly reported to you after the fact. Information and news flows to us as fast as it does to journalists which is more immediate than it ever has been. Certainly in these two cases it is the subject matter that causes this shitty feeling I have but in years past I would have just caught this story in the paper sometime late tomorrow or perhaps in a quick TV news clip tonight. Instead I got only a small blurb about it this afternoon not long after it went out on the police scanners then followe the twitter updates all day. This evolution of how we gather our news is amazing, but this is twice now it has kind of taken a toll on me emotionally.
