Two days isn’t a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but by social media standards, it’s an eternity. Two NFL conference championship games have since passed, bringing with them a kicker called Billy Cundiff missing a game-tying field goal and proceeding to crash Twitter’s servers, then a young wide receiver named Kyle Williams muffing one and fumbling a later punt to allow the New York Giants through to the Super Bowl.
The night before, Twitter was abuzz with the rumor that former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno had passed. The first tweet I saw on my stream, actually, was from a former college classmate who was in no way tied to the situation or reporting of it. It read simply, “Joe Paterno has died.”
No link. No validation. No clue. Huh?
Obviously this person wasn’t the source, but it had originated from Penn State’s student newspaper, Onward State. The journalism school Poynter recaps how the misinformation got out, here, but here’s the Cliff notes version: Onward State reports it, it gets picked up by CBSSports.com, and within minutes it goes viral. An hour later, and without this having been confirmed by the family directly, they then have to deny the report.
By Sunday morning, it is later confirmed by his family that Paterno has died. So, in hindsight, the original reporting wasn’t wrong by the nature of the outcome, but it was incorrect by its timing and claim at the original time of posting. Onward State’s managing editor had resigned well by then, but the damage was done, and suddenly Onward State became known for all the wrong reasons. Poynter explains AP's stricter sourcing standards and how it didn't get dragged into the mess, here.
Two things I have to take issue with in this whole ordeal. The first is obvious: a family should, under no circumstances, have to spend the final minutes they have with their dying loved one in question having to refute an erroneous media report that said person has died. When that person passes, it should always be left to the family to make that report, and let it out when they see fit. I really don’t think I need to elaborate on that.
The second, and far greater issue as a journalism graduate and former news desk editor of my own school newspaper, is the quest to be first, rather than right, and how that quest can bite you firmly in the ass.
I don’t quite know when it happened, but somewhere along the line the quest of glory for being first and getting your name and publication out as “being first,” did, to some agencies and individuals, become more important than being right. I understand the competitive drive to want to break stories first, and frankly, the rush of digging and investigating for “the big story” is half the reason you get into journalism.
But it takes time to compile and verify those facts when dealing with a big story, get your OK from your sources, editors and fellow reporters the story is in fact, good to go, and then actually post whatever story it is you’re working on. Post it right, great – and if it’s first, then that’s a bonus in my view.
However, in the quest to make “big stories” first, if you get it wrong, you not only end up with egg on your face, smeared in every different direction; you also get the immediate and large scale vitriolic feedback from social media, who sees your every post, your every tweet, the nanosecond it leaves “enter.” And you better be damn well sure what you’re posting on there is accurate because even if you delete it, chances are at least one of your followers will have picked it up and re-tweeted it themselves.
Sports-wise, this has happened in Indianapolis with the Colts pulling a 180 on their local media and firing their head coach, Jim Caldwell, after it was hinted he would stay. Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star explains here. In my direct world of covering motorsports in what’s been a very frantic offseason, there’s been a couple instances when reporters of opposing sites have rushed to post stories without the team, driver, manufacturer or series giving the OK. By the time the right entity posts something, they’re the last one to do so, and it looks bad on them that they’re reporting something “officially” that has been rumored for weeks and either leaked or written by someone who might have broken the embargo (
Those examples, of course, pale in scale to the Paterno outbreak on Saturday night. But the principle is the same. By trying to jump the gun in the name of the scoop, and refusing to let the right entity make the announcement on their own, you wind up risking your name and your publication for the sake of maybe five or 10 minutes. The only glory you get from being first, if you’re right, is being first on Google’s search listings for timestamps. Obviously this weekend, we’ve seen what can happen when you get it wrong.
Being right can mean keeping things in the dark. Since I started my new job in August, I’ve had to withhold sensitive and very key bits of information without posting it. But I respected my sources and respected the entities who gave that to me, and I know that two-way trust street will pay dividends going forward for both me personally, and my organization that I represent.
I certainly have embraced social media, as evidenced by my self-deprecating discussion of how I went from hater to addict on Twitter. I think Twitter can be great for news and networking. But it must be treated with care.
I can’t say it any clearer than this: to me, it is far more important to be right rather than first. I will always work to wait that if I’m not the person entrusted with breaking the news, that the right entity does so and I will let them do just that. It’s something I learned and have worked to implement into my career.
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Another quick thought …
I’m glad I didn’t have a dog in the fight of the respective AFC and NFC Championship games this weekend, which were both fairly exciting. My Green Bay Packers got knocked out last week, putting the kibosh on a 15-1 season but one where the defense had more holes than a good slice of Swiss. Either way, I felt for both Cundiff and Williams in the aftermath, and wish people would look at it as just a game – which it is – and remove the ludicrous death threats or outrageous reactions. If you want to get mad at people, look at the ones who risked things on Wall Street and drove the economy off a cliff in 2008 …
Out for now, cheers. Off to Daytona on Wednesday for my first Rolex 24, and first visit to Daytona International Speedway.
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