Rushing to be wrong

Get it first. You can always verify its accuracy later, but get it first.

 

This is what I hate about journalism these days. It's more important to be first than right, in the mind of some editors. And those editors will NEVER take responsibility when one of their writers, eager to adhere to their admonitions, rushes to be first instead of right and gets something wrong.

 

Re: media response to Paterno's death

Jason Whitlock is one of the journalists who Tweeted support to Devon Edwards, the Onward State ME who resigned.

http://jimromenesko.com/2012/01/22/editor-gets-support-after-resigning-over-incorrect-paterno-report/

Meanwhile, in the middle of last night's drama, Poynter tried to track the (bad) sourcing across the interwebs. It all goes back to unnamed sources and nonexistent verification, the bedrock of reporting. By the way, AP patted itself on the back for not running with the (bad) initial report.

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/160270/how-false-reports-of-joe-paternos-death-were-spread-and-debunked/

 

If you don't have a reporter involved in the coverage, you don't have enough of a stake to warrant believing a student publication on a matter like this. AP is mostly very cautious, and any professional enterprise that doesn't care about a big story enough to have its own reporter on the story can wait for AP.

If AP had something like this wrong, you can guarantee heads would roll.

 

I also posted this on the RIP thread but think it might be better here:

I haven't read everything out there on this yet, but, given Onward State's explanation of what happened in its apparently inaccurate report that Paterno had died, what other corroboration that he hadn't died was there at the time besides that of Paterno's sons?

Given what's been going on with Paterno, Penn State and the Sandusky matter lately, how could Paterno's sons necessarily be trusted to have been telling the truth or giving out the most accurate information regarding their father's health and/or death?

This chain of events is just an illustration of the media world in action today. The accuracy -- because it seems Onward State's report actually was not far off, if it was off at all -- is directly tied to the speed-of-light changeability of things and quite simply cannot be kept up with with any degree of lasting reliability.

To say that something wasn't true an hour ago, or minutes ago, with hand-wringing to the extent that people are asked to resign, but now it is true and we're not sure whether we actually needed to have taken things that far...how much does it really matter? That is the question that journalism has to grapple with because credibility used to be something to be built up over time.

But that's the problem now. It's not that someone or an organization intrinsically may not have any credibilty, it is that time (and media effort to keep up) is moving so fast as to be practically non-existent.

It is making it so that "credibility" as we know it and think of it and wring our hands about it is almost irrelevant.

 

True. And what bothers me the most (I think) is I'm already seeing the "well, 24 hr news cycle rushed to be first and gets it wrong. Sorry. We'll be more careful. Media needs to be more responsible. blah blah"

Because the next time, and there will be a next time, they'll do it all over again. No one learns. No one corrects. It's be first. Not be accurate. As a professional journalist, it disturbs me the harm that does to the profession as a whole.

 

I have a much greater issue with the credibility issue for CBS than for Onward State. There are bad sources. We've all had them. Most reporters have probably gone forward with a bad source. And sure, you'd hope that they did a more comprehensive job in checking. But it happens.

CBS took the report of a student-run blog at face value and published based on that single, completely unconfirmed report. There is a credibility issue in that case.

 

Why would you doubt Paterno's sons?
I don't recall anything they have said, or tweeted that could be construed as anything close to a lie?

And given the fact they have been ones speaking out on their dad's behalf, is there a choice?

 

Waiting on AP is no longer an option for big media entities in this environment. They're often many minutes or hours behind other credible media sources on the biggest news stories, and basing the way you operate solely on them would make you irrelevant from a time standpoint. That's a simple fact, like it or not, and the idea is a non-starter.

Many mistakes were made on this story Saturday night, with many things to consider so it doesn't happen again. "Wait for AP" isn't among the possible solutions.

 

If it was that crucial a story, why not have a reporter working on it? Why accept anyone else's word? Why not push for your own scoop? You're in a tough position here, and I don't mean to rub in any failures. But I would think an organization such as CBS would have been well served having a reporter, be it a stringer or full-timer, working on the Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky/Penn State "beat," in which case you could have done what the media entities with their reporters working on the story did and attempt to verify the report.

 

Because this link is not on this thread and is what I was referring to in my earlier post here, I'm putting here for reference:

http://onwardstate.com/2012/01/22/what-happened-last-night/

"But at around 8:00 p.m., one of our writers posted that he had received word from a source that Joe Paterno had died. The source had been forwarded an email ostensibly sent from a high-ranking athletics official (later found to be a hoax) to Penn State athletes with information of Paterno’s passing. A second writer — whom we later found out had not been honest in his information — confirmed to us that the email had been sent to football players. With two independent confirmations of an email announcing his death, managing editor Devon Edwards was confident in the story and hit send on the tweet we had written, informing the world that Joe Paterno had died."

I'm curious about the above paragraph, in particular, and I wonder, if you didn't know the email to players regarding Paterno's death was not a hoax and was not in fact from a high-ranking PSU athletics official (as Onward State obviously didn't), and if you trusted your other reporter (as we're supposed to be able to do, and as Onward State obviously did at the time), how many of us on here would not have run some kind of story, particularly as part of the online operation?

 

I would have went with it but framed it as "Penn State football players were sent an e-mail saying Joe Paterno has died." Until you get family confirmation of the death, you avoid reporting it as confirmed fact. That second reporter has a lot of explaining to do.