By Skylar Smith

Daily Titan Staff Writer

Recently several news stations have speculated on what may have happened during the tragic incident at Fort Hood.

Television news anchors and reporters have, on-air mind you, analyzed several minutes of surveillance footage of the killer purchasing food several hours before the incident, talking about what may or may not have been going through his head.

This speculative talk or “plausible narrative” has become common in television newsrooms for several years now and it needs to stop, at least on-air.

There are plenty of media outlets for the reporters and anchors to give their opinions on the incident. This is why Internet forums exist.

But for some reason, ABC News, FOX News, MSNBC and even CNN feel they need to waste minutes, even hours, of air time with speculation. I don’t call this news; I call it filler.

In the print and Internet world there is a clear separation between news and opinion. The news will be printed in a specific section of a Web site and then links about opinion and speculation will be provided below or around the article, but are not a part of it.

However, in television this separation between speculation and fact is blurred, and I cannot help but think this is done on purpose to increase ratings.

Whether they are reporting on an incident like Fort Hood, Columbine or Virginia Tech, television reporters feel the need to give their input on-air and producers somehow allow it.

As an anchor, when you have a running bar below your name that says “Breaking News!” and your vocabulary includes words such as “maybe,” “think” and “could have,” and its not a quote, then you are no longer reporting “Breaking News!” you are reporting “Breaking Opinion!”

We might as well have news tags of anchors looking sternly at the camera saying, “This just in! We have an update on my idea of what may or may not have happened the night that the killer may have been eating or buying something from this one store near the incident. More at 11.”

So, how can we fix this? Simple, report news in the segment entitled news and share opinions in segments designated for opinion. If a producer needs to fill a time slot with news, don’t just repeat the same surveillance footage over two hours and speculate behind it.

Report what needs to be reported, and then be journalists and go out and find more news. Only when information is released and an event develops should it be reported on; otherwise, it’s just speculation that should be saved for blogs and opinion segments.

By Jeremiah Magan

Daily Titan Opinion Editor

The recent tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas has raised a lot of questions in the minds of American citizens.

Aside from the obvious inquiry into the alleged shooter’s religious beliefs and the mental conditioning of U.S. soldiers being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, the simple question of “How could this have happened?” is foremost in the minds of many.

Television news organizations initially reported that there were three shooters involved in the Fort Hood massacre and that only a few people had died. We now know that it was only one person and that 13 have died as a result of the shooter’s actions.

Several news outlets featured their anchors and reporters discussing the events at Fort Hood with “experts” in an attempt to explain what happened or at least hypothesize what was happening on the base and how the alleged shooter(s) could physically have done what they did. The facts of the event were identified and the rest was tagged as pure speculation on the part of the reporters, anchors and “experts.”

Early reports are always sketchy at best, especially when they involve an event that causes as much frenzy and confusion as Thursday’s incident. TV news organizations do the best to provide as much information as they can while explaining the event, but this is often difficult given the lack of information that is available early on.

Because of the competitive nature of news media outlets, accuracy often falls victim to being first.

People will go to the station that they know will be able to give them as much of an explanation as possible and the media outlets know this. If they want to grab the top spot in ratings, they know they need to do something that will grab the public’s interest and keep it there.

It may not be the best way of doing things, but it is often the only option media outlets have if they want to attract viewers and win the ratings war against their competitors.

The general public doesn’t want to wait for accurate information, they want to get the general idea and move on with their day. News outlets have to do something if they want to keep their eyes glued to their TV screens.

It goes against the reporter’s natural instinct to openly discuss their assumptions of what may have happened, but these hypothetical discussions also cater directly to our natural human desire to speculate.

This is what keeps eyes on the screen and people interested in what going on, even if it does not directly involve them.

General human interest is a powerful attraction.