The Tranquility Of Information
What I am about to relate is, unfortunately, a true story. A story about what happens and about the information that the media gives about these events, or that they do not give, depending on the content of what has happened. A story that I lived in the first person.
Everything I am about to narrate happened on a cold afternoon in Paris. I was barely fifteen years old and I was on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower with all my ESO roommates. It was March 29 and I remember it was a really bad day. Overcast skies, light drizzle and bone-deep chill. I was calm looking at the Parisian landscape. And then it happened.
The facts
I heard a lot of screaming and people running. I turned around in bewilderment and walked over to where people were going, asking my classmates if they had seen anything, if they knew what had happened.
“He has died, he has died!” They screamed. I approached the inside of the Eiffel tower to try to see what had happened and looked down. On the ground, in front of a large crowd of people, there was a lifeless teenager.
Later I learned that the young man had made the terrible decision to take his own life had been able to bypass the valley of safety. Without hesitation, he threw himself into the void. Impossible to survive such a tremendous fall. The terrible image of that teenager on the floor is an unpleasant sight that I will never forget.
Suddenly, in just a few minutes, everything was filled with policemen, who drove away the people who were around. They also put up screens to cover the dramatic scene from the eyes of all of us who were in that place.
The day ended very badly for all of us. No one could ever forget the drama of what happened. And not only that, but two of my colleagues had to be taken to a hospital after suffering a very strong anxiety attack.
Information
That same night, hours after what happened and in the quiet of the hotel where we were staying, we turned on the television. We wanted to know what had really happened, what was known, why the adolescent had made the decision to kill himself.
I firmly believed that the information that we all wanted to know would appear. After all, it was quite a scandalous event, given the boy’s age and the place he had chosen to carry out his determination. Besides, I, at least, had no record of anything like this ever happening before.
But no, it did not appear. The information that was given was null, nonexistent. Television ignored what had happened and not a sad word or sad line appeared in the next day’s newspaper.
At the time, he didn’t understand why. Now yes. The media are not interested in us knowing that things happen in certain places. They give a bad image of the city, reduce tourism, make it seem that security is not enough or effective, so that negative information is simply ignored.
On the other hand, it is feared that when announcing the news, the Werther effect, the contagion of suicide, will occur. The fear arises that, suddenly, more similar cases will begin to occur in the Eiffel Tower.
After what happened that day, I am left with the fact that I learned that the media does not offer the true reality of the world. They only offer partial information, that of a world made up with brand name mascara, lipstick and perfume. Needless to say, of course I don’t feel like going back to Paris.
