Critique of the Time Square Bomb Report by ABC News

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On May 1, 2010 a car bomb planted in the middle Time Square. The bomb never exploded due to local vendors reporting the suspicious vehicle. On May 3, 2010 ABC News released a report on the progress of the investigation. Utilizing the psychometric paradigm, as described in Perception of risk posed by extreme events (Slovic & Weber, 2002), a bombing carries a high dread factor to the public and to certain degree it carries a high unknown factor in that it is not observable until after it explodes. However, I believe to experts, it would continue to rank high in the dread factor but would rank lower in the unknown factor. Because of this high dread factor it is the public leader’s responsibility to address the public and put that fear to ease. Utilizing the STARCC Principle as described by the CDC (Reynolds, n.d.) a public message should be simple, timely, accurate, relevant, credible, and consistent. ABC News did a couple of things right and some wrong in the May 3rd news release about the Time Square Bomb attempt. To start with, lets address what ABC News did right. The news report was simple. They avoided big words and kept the content very basic. The news report was also timely. The bomb was found on May 1, 2010 and the report was released on May 3, 2010. By public officials addressing the public quickly it helped to show the public that the incident was being handled. Now, what ABC News did wrong. There was accuracy in how the event occurred. ABC News gave a good description of the events and how it unfolded. However, there were contradicting information as to whether or not the bomb could have actually exploded. New York Police stated the fertilizer used was not the kind that would explode and later in th... ... middle of paper ... ...et al., 2010). Overall, this was a poorly done news release. There were inconsistencies throughout and officials did not seem to be on the same page. The only thing that was accomplished was that officials managed to leave more questions and fear in the public’s eye. Works Cited Esposito, R., Thomas, P., & Ross, B. (2010, May 3). Authorities Have Identified Person of Interest in Times Square Bomb Attempt - ABC News. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/times-square-car-bomber-police-release-video-suspect/story?id=10534834 Reynolds, B. (n.d.). Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication: By leaders for leaders. Retrieved from http://emergency.cdc.gov/cerc/pdf/leaders.pdf Slovic, P., & Weber, E. U. (2002). Perception of risk posed by extreme events. Retrieved from http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/chrr/documents/meetings/roundtable/white_papers/slovic_wp.pdf

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