Steve Silva.
To most, that name means nothing special. Now what if I told you Steve Silva witnessed the Boston Marathon bombings, what would you think? That he was a victim, or a person who helped the terrorists? Most likely, you automatically thought the worst.
As a society, we tend to focus on the negative parts of a horrific situation, like the bombings in Boston, while we should be concentrating on the positive aspects involved in these acts of terror.
While there is nothing positive about five people dying and hundreds being injured during the week of April 15, people, like Silva, helped to bring the situation to light.
Silva was a reporter for Boston Globe and was recording the finish line of the marathon when the bombs exploded. Instead of running the opposite direction, he moved closer, racing to get footage of the explosion that just occurred. He was the first person to post a video of the incident and thanks to him, the whole world was clued in on the happenings in Boston.
However, you don’t see Silva’s name plastered across the television on the nightly news or even recognized for his heroic actions and along with the other first responders, nothing was mentioned at all. Of course, the media has thanked the first responders for racing to help the injured but in no way are their names as recognizable when compared to Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The media is so caught up in attending to every last detail of these alleged terrorists that the “helpers” get passed up.
There’s only so many times I can hear the same information about how “the bad guy is on the loose” before I lose interest. What I don’t understand is, why does the media keep focusing on the bad stuff over and over again and not take time, while the guy has still not been caught, to inform the masses on the heroes of the bombings instead of the villains. If the terrorist hasn’t been caught yet, and nothing significant has come up, why do I need to hear the same, repetitive information, yet again? I don’t.
Although the bombings in Boston are the most recent tragedies to surface the media, the situations in Newtown, and even at the “Dark Knight Rises” premiere, received the same negative stories from the public. The center focus was around the shooter, of course, but it got to the point where the shooter was all anyone talked about. The victims became names we just honored and the shooter became the center of our attention.
But what about Allan Pantar? Or Joe Andruzzi? The regular citizens standing nearby who raced to help keep the injured alive. And sure, there were probably thousands of helpers’ names the media never got ahold of, but instead of giving the terrorists the attention they don’t deserve, we should be praising the ones who attempted to help instead of harm.
Just like the Boston Red Sox who, during one of their games invited law enforcement officials, first responders, race participants and volunteers for the opening ceremony, to honor their heroic actions. The whole time there was no mention of the Tsarneav brothers and for three hours the city shifted its attention to a baseball game played solely in honor of the people who shed light in a time of darkness.
In times of crisis, we need to remember that just because a tragedy happens doesn’t mean that everyone involved was either a victim or perpetrator. There are helpers out there and by all means I don’t mean that each and every one of them needs a gold medal of honor or even a full hour of nightly news discussing solely them. However, instead of tweeting about how horrible the incident in Boston was or posting your feelings on Facebook about the terrorists, take a moment to pause and reflect on the positive people involved. The ones who saved someone’s life or recorded the first footage to inform the world.
Helpers are everywhere but we seem to forget about them or just overlook their accomplishments because we are too busy reading up on every last detail about the terrorists.
