Media And Its Impact On Society Essay

On May 12, 2015, an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, drawing in the media to cover the story. Media has a way with distributing bits and pieces of information to the public. When media does release information, the information is released in a way that makes viewers or readers perceive something in a particular way. When news surfaced about the derailed Amtrak train, media officials took it upon themselves to start pointing fingers as to why a crash of this magnitude happened.
It appears that media jumps quickly at blaming a person or corporation when events go awry. Media is quick at accusing others because people need someone to blame at all time. Humans have it hardwired into their brains that someone is always responsible for events that happen, whether the events are successful or catastrophic. The derailed locomotive was a tragic event that injured many and caused eight people to lose their lives. The shock of the accident was too much to handle so people looked for someone to blame.
A train speeding at 102 mile per hour is a ridiculously fast rate for any vehicle to be traveling (beside an airplane). People all around are asking many questions such as why the train was going more than double the speed limit? Was the train speeding because of the engineer driving, or was there a malfunction with the speedometer so he was unable to tell the actual speed he was going at the time? One would think that someone could feel the sudden acceleration of the…