On fake blizzards, disappearing airplanes and ruining the Internet

When I was young, I walked to school. Uphill. We only had 20 channels and none of them were MTV. Wikipedia was called “the library.” And we had winter.

I still walk a lot, but something happened to winter. Or something happened to us. Wednesday we got a “blizzard” throughout Western New York. It snowed a little. And there was some wind. But a blizzard? Okay, to be fair, it snowed a lot. But still … as blizzards go, it was pretty lame.

Maybe my memory of childhood is wrong. But I remember it snowing all day every day from Thanksgiving until Easter. Now we get a few flakes and it’s a blizzard. They close down government offices and schools, advise you against driving. Heck, I couldn’t even go bowling.

I don’t mean for a second that the street crews around town didn’t do a great job, at least in my neck of the proverbial woods. Maybe the clear streets and my not walking uphill to school are why I feel like winter’s diminished. I don’t know.

Another thing I don’t know: How did a plane just disappear? It’s 2014, right? But nearly a week after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 made its last transmission, they don’t know where the plane is. Or where it was. Or when it went missing. How is that possible? There’s radar and doppler weather and the NSA.

One thing officials have somehow concluded is that no matter how or when the plane went missing, its disappearance wasn’t the act of terrorism. Although the CIA hasn’t ruled it out, Malaysian authorities have called it unlikely. Why? Of course, the CIA thinks anything can be terrorism. Even Wednesday’s blizzard.

In addition to the snowblizzardpocalypse we we had on Wednesday, it was the 25th anniversary of what we have come to know as the Internet — the World Wide Web. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg celebrated by telling President Barack Obama that he’s ruining it.

“When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government,” Zuckerberg said on his public Facebook page. “The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.”

If the government really wants to improve the Internet, they can start a website to follow airplanes and predict blizzards … or something.

Scott Leffler remembers winter and life before the Internet. He’s been on airplanes. But never disappearing ones. Follow him on Twitter @scottleffler.

We need to be careful where we get our news

I had a love-hate relationship with my profession last week.

It started with frustration over an AP photo from the Boston Marathon bombing. The photo in question showed a man in a wheelchair being wheeled away from the site of the bombing. The caption for the photo didn’t give the man’s name and that frustrated me to no end.

I thought it was very distasteful to show a closeup of a man severely injured and not take the time to get the man’s name. I was concerned for his wellbeing and had no way to find out if he was OK or not. I was fearful of using a photo of someone that may have ended up dying in the blast. I thought to do so would be classless. So I didn’t use it. In fact, none of the papers in this newsgroup used the photo — I’m happy to report.

It continued with all of the erroneous reports from — primarily — TV news saying there were more bombs than there were ... and that the suspects were caught ... and the use of photos of people that may be the suspects. One such case had the New York Post showing front-page photos of two men they said were suspects in the case. As it turns out, they were not.

The race to be first, it would seem, has replaced the need to be right for many news organizations. Just as the desire for sensationalism has replaced any semblance of decorum among many news organizations.

Another example of news-gone-awry was the alleged release of “the suspects” names via a Boston police scanner — followed by several Twitter posts with those names — followed by thousands of retweets of those posts. Within minutes the names of two men unconnected to the case went from a police scanner in Boston to the entirety of the internet due to the rapid response of social media.

Many news organizations picked up on that and used Twitter as a source of information, saying that the details came from Boston police, which Boston PD denies.

The timing was odd as just a week prior a local bank was robbed and the name of the suspect went out over the police scanner. Later that evening we got a press release from the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office about the robbery but they didn’t list the name of the suspect that had gone out over the scanner so we didn’t print it. The decision was made that it was better to be a day late on getting this person’s name out than to have the wrong name published and tarnish someone’s reputation without cause.

As it turns out, the name that went over the scanner was the same as the name of the woman they eventually arrested. But I would still make that same decision again. From my perspective, being right outweighs being first. Every time.

The 24-hour news cycle, coupled with social media has made a mess of the news.

Facebook and Twitter are certainly useful means of communication. But they’re unfiltered and should be taken with a proverbial grain of salt. They shouldn’t be used as sources for media. And they shouldn’t be confused with being vetted media. To be clear, I’m not saying that having access to the most up-to-date news is a bad thing. Not at all. But I am saying that we need to be careful to distinguish between news and supposition.

And by “we” I mean readers and reporters alike. If the mainstream media starts acting like a bunch of bloggers, that’s how we’re all going to end up.

Scott Leffler considers himself a writer with a full-time job editing. He also blogs, Facebooks, Instagrams and tweets @scottleffler.

Bits and pieces ...

It’s easy in this fast-paced world we live in to lose sight of the big picture .I think a lot of people did that this past week when President Obama visited Buffalo.

All anyone seemed to want to talk about was that he had chosen Duff’s over Anchor Bar for wings and that some woman called him a “hottie.” I heard very little conversation on the substance of his speech.

Of course, I’m not sure his speech had much substance, to be honest with you. But it was the reason he was here. And yet, we’re talking about cougars and chicken wings.

Chicken wings and cougars must be the modern-day version of bread and circus.

•••

For some reason or another, I wasn’t interested in seeing the president while he was here. I’m sure I could have easily gotten press credentials for one of the things on his to-do list, but I made no effort whatsoever. I’m not even sure why.

In 2004, when President Bush was in town, I made sure to go see him.

Knowing what you know about me, it’s odd, right? That I’d make an effort to see Bush and not Obama. I’m still trying to figure out what that means.

•••

Of course, with most live events, you get a better view from your couch than from the event itself. Think of all the things you miss when you’re at a Bills game that you see on TV. Then again, it’s really the atmosphere that you’re there for. I could sit home and listen to Pearl Jam any time, but going to the concert last Monday was something special. It really is the atmosphere. And oftentimes, the company.

•••

That said, local TV did a great job covering the presidential visit. I caught some of Channel 2’s coverage and was forced to watch some of Channel 4’s. I’m going to assume that Channel 7’s was similar in scope to the other two.

Radio, on the other hand, didn’t do as good a job in my opinion. I checked three different stations, all of the news-talk variety. Only one of them really covered the visit. And they used the audio feed from one of the TV stations to do it. But it was better than the satellite-fed talk shows on the other two.

•••

It seems to me that the world is shrinking all the time. Maybe it’s because I make such an effort to stay connected, whether it’s through Facebook or Twitter or my cell phone or my latest greatest method of connectivity, foursquare.

Foursquare is an application for your phone which uses your GPS to allow you to tell your friends where you’re at. It seemed silly at first, but it’s fun when you get into it.

This past weekend, I noticed that one friend of mine and I were never more than a few blocks apart, despite the fact that we were all over the Buffalo region. Another friend of mine and I were actually at the Buffalo Zoo at the same time, although we didn’t run into each other. Was just weird, I guess.

You may recall I mentioned a while ago that I was apartment hunting and it went well. As it turns out, I now live down the street from a friend of mine, a fact I didn’t know until after moving in. Making this more strange is that I have recently discovered that two other pairs of friends live down the street from each other. One pair knows each other, but didn’t know they lived so close. The other pair only know each other’s names … and only because I’ve mentioned them to each other.

Maybe this is common and we don’t know it. Maybe we should just pay attention better.

Of course, it doesn’t matter how small the world is if you don’t take your face out of your phone to actually talk to the person next to you.

I think that’s the real big picture.