It is safe to say that everyone already heard about the boy who attended a public high school in Irving, Texas and got arrested for building a clock.
Fortunately, it wasn’t a bomb like people thought.
Ahmed Mohammed built a digital clock out of a pencil case.
He brought it to school to impress his teacher.
What should’ve been an incident, a simple mistake on the teacher’s part, blew up into mass media news that we’re still following today.
The media saw the opportunity to twist and exploit this story.
Instead of saying that Mohammed got arrested for building a homemade clock, every story continuously ties him to a clock-bomb.
If you search his name online you can’t see the word clock without bomb next to his name.
Mohammed is even a famous trending picture on all social media outlets.
The media is still covering his every move.
There are articles online that inform readers that he’s left his high school, and is trying to reach out to MIT.
Due to the media running wild with his story, he will forever be known as the boy who people thought he mistakenly built a clock-bomb.
Media has a way of making stories bigger than what they actually are, especially when it comes to kids.
Our world relies heavily on the media, which means that they can seemingly get away with anything.
The media can control what they put out because no one else is going to cover the “need to know” stories.
Since they get to decide what news is newsworthy and how they cover it no one is holding them accountable for the negativity they put out.
It’s one thing to report a story, it’s another to highlight the bad parts of the story then end with the good parts.
People will remember the bad before the good because it’s so terrible that it’s hard to forget.
America is notorious for loving scandalous and controversial stories without learning the facts behind them.
Case in point the GOP race.
Americans tune in for what inappropriate thing Donald Trump may say rather than listening to the platforms of the candidates.
The million-dollar question here is: Would this have been just as media blown had he not been middle eastern?
People are erring on the side of caution, for good reason, when it comes to the safety of their communities.
Just because someone looks a certain way, is from a specific background or is of a certain religion doesn’t give people the right to stereotype them.
They are individuals; even though they may have a common belief system, they still make their own decisions based on those beliefs.
If people took the time to educate themselves on the different backgrounds that grace this planet we would have less of these “mistaken identity cases.”
It’s unnecessary and frankly, it’s ignorant.
Yes, in this world there are children, yes children, who have been apprehended by extremists and forced into militaries.
But, just because one child may be turned into a militant killer doesn’t mean they all have.
Now, the teacher was probably erring on the side of caution. Respectfully.
The authorities, school officials and whoever else was in charge of releasing information to the media should have handled it better.
Knowing that the news and media outlets have veered to only care about ratings, reviews and profit they should’ve been more discreet about the situation.
The information let out should’ve been controlled made to look like what it was.
Instead of how it was handled giving Ahmed Mohammed a stigma that will follow him around for years.
Again, it is ignorance and Americas lack of due diligence leads to events like this.
