{"id":3871,"date":"2012-12-19T13:50:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T18:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=3871"},"modified":"2012-12-19T13:50:18","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T18:50:18","slug":"bystander-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2012\/12\/19\/bystander-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Bystander Journalism?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The controversial New York Post cover, cropped so as not to show the victim, nor the word DOOMED (all caps in the original). Image via nypost.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On a busy bridge in Detroit during a traffic jam, Deletha Word was pulled from her car by Martell Welch, whose car she had sideswiped. In view of more than forty people, former football-player Welch savagely beat Word, tearing off her clothes. Welch jumped off the bridge to escape her attacker and subsequently drowned. When I heard this story on the evening news back in 1996, I was horrified that not one of the many onlookers attempted to stop Word\u2019s attack or to pull her from the river (she initially survived the fall, but couldn\u2019t swim). I will never forget my first introduction to the \u201cBystander Effect,\u201d the social phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to intervene to help someone in distress if there are other people nearby.<\/p>\n

The Bystander Effect was highlighted again recently as a result of the notoriously-tactless New York Post<\/em>\u2019s front-page publication of photographs of a man about to be killed by an oncoming New York City subway train. The man had been pushed onto the tracks after an altercation was struggling to get back onto the platform. Facing criticism for photographing the man\u2019s death, rather than helping pull him from the tracks, the photographer has defended himself in the media. He’s said he could not have gotten to the victim in time to save him, but by taking photos—thus causing his camera’s flash to go off and possibly alert the driver of the train—he hoped to help. Plus, many other people were closer to the man, but did nothing to pull him up.<\/p>\n

Arguably, social media has exacerbated the Bystander Effect.\u00a0Tim Knapp, a sociologist at Missouri State University, commented in an\u00a0article\u00a0<\/a>about the NYC incident, “Now everyone can be a journalist and some times, at the expense of being a good Samaritan.” That is, no longer are onlookers\u00a0passive observers who \u201cdo not want to get involved\u201d or\u00a0risk their own personal safety;\u00a0now many bystanders film or photograph the incidents in which they fail to intervene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a busy bridge in Detroit during a traffic jam, Deletha Word was pulled from her car by Martell Welch, whose car she had sideswiped. In view of more than forty people, former football-player Welch savagely beat Word, tearing off her clothes. Welch jumped off the bridge to escape her attacker and subsequently drowned. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1887,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[17294,17296,118,129,732,17295],"class_list":["post-3871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-bystander-effect","tag-good-samaritan","tag-journalism","tag-media","tag-social-media","tag-tim-knapp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1887"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3871"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3880,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions\/3880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}