V I N M A N' s V I B e

(Note from The Vinman: This is a long-read piece. It is a complex question on a specific incident and event that requires a deep read. But I asked for topics )

From New York, my beloved sister Co sent this:

I would love to read about your perspective of time as it relates to the internet. I was intrigued by the notion of needing to educate “at a break neck pace,” and it struck me because this morning in the NY Times they reported that they’d made a mistake in their coverage of Senator Gifford’s shooting and declared her dead erroneously, again because of this need to get the info out on the internet immediately. Do we all really need to be this sped up – and/or does the internet need to be cognizant of speed for some good reason? Or, could a news agency or website be known for being thoughtful, accurate, creative, not necessarily fast?

(VjK) I need to begin by saying the Arizona tragedy (like many similar) – and the question posed – makes me process a response quite carefully. Frankly, it gives me pause because in the fall of 1993 a crazed lunatic – much like the trigger man in this case – walked into a Family Fitness Center in El Cajon, CA less than a mile away from me and killed four innocent people there before turning the gun on himself. Having just put El Cajon’s The Californian newspaper to bed, it was my job to stop the presses (yes, I yelled, “STOP THE PRESSES!”) and collaborate by phone with our reporter on scene and write a front-page article to be delivered only hours later.

Unfortunately, that was not similar to Gifford’s shooting in one way: Police and medical staff on the scene confirmed quickly that those who had lost their lives were dead instantly. Chaotic as the scene was, in a similar shopping center, it was cleared and roped off quickly. And there was no instant ongoing reporting other than radio and local television, neither of which were in a 24/7 news cycle then. The national news picked it up within hours, and I will never forget the relief in my sister Co’s voice when I answered her call to the newsroom from the East Coast to make sure I (and my future wife Sheila) were okay. She had been worried the killer had hit our gym not knowing which it was.

It was also my job, and others, to continue our coverage commandeered by a lunatic publisher whose antics and ethics were as far away from the high integrity my colleagues and I held as professional journalists. And so, we went to the crime scene and worked with police while an army of satellite up-link dishes rolled into the shopping center parking lot on trucks, lined up and unloaded glossy journos who laughed and joked about the scene while local folks were in agony. We had follow up work to do, but no edition to close until the next day. Shocked, stunned, but professionally prepared, the newsroom went about its business.

My colleagues had already experienced tragedy and grief a few years before when one of The Californian’s own reporters was murdered defending his wife when he interrupted a rape in their apartment on a routine home-for-lunch date. I arrived just before the trial.

They’d been there. They’d been national news themselves. How does a newsroom cover the murder of one of their own? They endured and covered a death-penalty trial in which the killer was spared his life. They, simply, are the toughest, most professional group of people there could ever be.

But, I digress. There’s a whole other part about a woman handing me a story the killer wrote in class foreshadowing the event and (once again) a lunatic killer slipped through the cracks and our unethical publisher demanding we print it word for word in the paper but you can read about that by clicking here.

Back to the question at hand. The answer – for the most part – has been covered by the best in journalism themselves, including the several major organizations who made the error. First, let’s review a couple of things:

• The original error in reporting Gifford’s death was made by NPR, which said
  (click here to read):

  This was a serious and grave error. Thankfully, Rep. Giffords is alive today, though sadly other victims of the shootings are not. Corrections and properly updated reports were issued within minutes……..The information we reported came from two different governmental sources, including a source in the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Nonetheless, in a situation so chaotic and changing so swiftly, we should have been more cautious. There were, obviously, conflicting reports from authorities and other sources. The error we made was unintentional, an error of judgment in a fast-breaking situation. It was corrected immediately. But we deeply regret the error.

• And from the NY Times Public Editor in yesterday’s Opinion Section (click here) :
  

  Here’s how the error was made. It was hectic in the newsroom with many news reports flowing in as Kathleen McElroy, the day Web news editor, was trying to decide whether The Times was ready to report Giffords’s death. She decided against it and was telling Web producers to hold off reporting it in a news alert when J. David Goodman, who was writing the story, told her he had a few changes he wanted to make. Ms. McElroy said, “I should have looked at every change,” but she thought Mr. Goodman was referring to small stuff. Mr. Goodman told me he then erred by reporting Representative Giffords’s death in the lead as though The Times itself were standing behind the information.
  

• And the best discussion about all this came immediately on Twitter from those involved. The Poynter article summarizing their comments up is a must read in the equation.

I would say that NPR, having two “governmental sources” saying Giffords was killed believed it had adequate confirmation by professional standards it was so. In its apology, NPR acknowledges there were conflicting stories but there always are and governmental sources are typically solid. As one of the tweets in Poynter’s story points out:

News orgs should be aggressive in reporting; conservative in printing/broadcasting/posting; transparent about how they get what they get.

But to say sources – even seemingly authoritative sources – can’t themselves get things wrong in the heat of moment ignores reality.

One key obviously to separate speculation from fact – and minimize the former as much as possible.

And the New York Times? Admittedly, the web editor on duty made a mistake by not reading the reporter’s “minor revisions.” This is where the transparency issue comes in. Instead of publishing the story saying “NPR and CNN are reporting that Giffords has been killed,” the changes made it appear as if the paper itself was saying so. There’s a huge difference there. But does it matter that they report others are reporting something? Should they wait? Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. It really depends on judgement and the scope of the story.

And in another tweet from the Poynter story:

It’s ahistorical to think initial reports in earlier incidents were uniformly accurate, tho journos should be accountable @gregmitch

@carr2n@GregMitch I’m saying it’s regrettable & damaging, but also regrettably predictable. I’m not being apologist; I’m describing how it works.

As Greg Mitchell notes, this has happened before. Walter Cronkite, for instance, became extremely frustrated (and said so) on air while reporting the conflicting reports of the Kennedy assassination. And here is where time in relation to the internet comes into play.

Time is not a factor (in fact, it is merely a measuring tool for our lives which all have a different news consumption metronomes), it’s the technology that instantly communicates information to an unlimited audience. Which is to say that in the grand scheme of things the amount of thoughtful, accurate, fact-checking, creative and deliberate fact checking that exists along that pipeline of information is incredibly correct. The professional standards of journalists are well-adhered to over the need to get it out there first. And they are already talking about ways to recall or “unpublish” erroneous reports so that all who received them (say via Twitter) would know there is a correction.

Could that cause even more lax reporting? I doubt it, because too many “recalls” would kill credibility.

As a colleague of mine said at a conference this year posed with the same question, “You’re not first if you’re wrong.” And any journalist or news organization worth a dime knows it. Those who erred in this case are well-respected and would not (nor did they) err to get it out first. They simply erred.

So what then, is my perspective on all of this? I believe the internet, social media and other tools used correctly can have immediate benefits to how people work and live. During the recent New York snowstorm, a man (and eventually teams of people) wandered through the city asking via Twitter if there were any people who needed immediate help getting shoveled out or taken for emergency care since services were so delayed. Lives saved.

In regards to the 1440/7 news cycle — 1,440 minutes every day, seven days a week — it’s a far cry from having time to scour copy with dozens of fact checkers than the daily newspaper days of old. But it’s here to stay. And the best thing is that journalists have new tools not only to source report and tell the stories better, but they can dissect issues like that in real-time and find ways to do it even better the next time.

I’m all in.