Something interesting happened today. I heard the news of a Detroit Police Officer shooting and killing his wife (also a Detroit Police Officer) and then critically shooting himself. This happened outside the public library in my hometown of Canton, MI. It appears to be an extreme case of domestic violence in which the members just happened to be police officers.
An aquaintance of mine from high school made a comment on his facebook page that said, "I just became aware that a Detroit police officer shot and killed his wife @ the canton library today. And I'm supposed to trust cops how?!" The funny thing to me is the ignorance involved in this comment. If some nut job florist went off the deep end and did the same thing, we wouldn't be afraid to buy flowers from that point forward. Our desire for opposition to authority really creates a lot of problems within the culture. Not saying that there aren't bad cops out there, this guy is clearly one of them, but he acted as an individual, separate from the Detroit police force.
The other thing worth noting is that I did in fact first hear about this news via facebook. It's interesting how a social networking tool, something that will clearly be popular in the future, has the ability to report news though its users. This has the potential to foster intelligence or to encourage ignorance. There is a certain degree of credibility associated with the AP wire telling me a police officer shot and killed his police officer wife that is lost when a facebook user says the same thing.
I sure hope the future of news isn't 100% user driven. It would be nice if we could hold onto the little bit of honesty and objectivity we still have.
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