Everyone in the nation has heard of Trayvon Martin’s story by now. But before the story was ever mentioned on the major news networks, it was a major story on social networks. Ordinary people informed us of a tragedy, before the media professionals ever made a sound that something was wrong.
Our society has to rely on regular people who are courageous enough to tell the world what is going on in their communities, rather than rely on the journalists who are responsible to do so. Outraged citizens expressed themselves on Facebook and Twitter and involved the rest of the country on what was going on in their communities.
If it had not been for those people that felt angry enough to express themselves on social media networks, the Trayvon Martin case would have probably remained a local issue, unlike the massive headlining story that it has become.
The social media networks have allowed people, who feel like their problems are not being spoken about or not being taken seriously enough, to draw attention to themselves and these issues. They don’t have to wait for the news reports anymore because they can launch their stories out to the world on their own.
Some people have even changed their profile pictures to a picture of Trayvon Martin, making it very hard to ignore the reality of the situation. Change.org has more than 50 petitions on its website alone.
Any major news network makes a legitimate effort to report on disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes as soon as they happen, but isn’t Trayvon Martin’s story a disaster in its own right? We’re living in a world where a man can kill a child and the news networks take their precious time to tell the world about it.
Have Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn become our new CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News? Honestly, it truly seems like it and that is so sad to me. We put our trust and faith in the major news networks and believe what they say over other sources.
It is becoming pretty difficult for society to put its trust in something that insists on withholding a portion of the information from the public that has hung onto their every word for many years.