Call 911 or Go Viral – The Choice is Yours

Have you ever been watching TV and seen a video of something terrible happening to someone? Like this:

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85,000 people have watched that video. It was shown on tons of major news outlets. Who was recording it? Why weren’t they calling for help? Are people more interested in getting their video on TV, or having it “go viral,” than in helping out someone in trouble?

My friend Ian Cohen recently wrote a post on the Weber Shandwick Social Studies blog about a time when he had to make a choice between calling 911 and recording a horrific accident. Here’s a little bit of it, click through to read the rest.

…I looked out my window and I saw a car across the street on fire. A car had crashed into a telephone pole and was going up in flames.

Instead of reaching for the phone to call 9-1-1, like you have been trained to do since a little kid, I did what I have been trained to do in my career and grabbed my camera (iPhone camera bc it was at arms length). I started taking a video of the car on fire as others ran across the street trying to help.

Click here to read the rest of his post…