johnbowman.net

Some colleagues of mine were talking about this set of pictures depicting an altercation between a motorist and a cyclist in Toronto. The link has made its way to Boing Boing and Metafilter.

One co-worker was wondering why the photographer didn’t sell the pictures to a newspaper. Well, a newspaper wouldn’t just run pictures like these without a story, and a story about a road-rage fight in which no one is seriously hurt and there probably won’t be any charges laid doesn’t sound like something I’d read in a newspaper.

Still, you can’t look at this picture and say there’s no story here.

And the way the story evolved online was interesting. The pictures were posted apparently without any text at all, leaving readers to speculate what might have happened in the comments.

The original poster, several hours later, added some point-form details, and the debate over what happened continued. The next day, Leah, the bike courier in the pictures, posted her side of the story.

As things often do on the net, things got nasty (”He should be hung!” “She was asking for it!”). Personal attacks (mostly on Leah) and insulting photoshops followed.

Is it “citizen journalism,” as Cory suggests? It might have started out that way, but it ended up as one of those things I read on the web that just makes me feel like I need a shower.

Like that “Victory for Islam” nonsense at a Liberal riding nomination. Never happened, quickly retracted, but it showed me how ignorant, reactionary and flat-out racist some people could be.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2006 at 12:01 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.