The last few months we have seen the mainstream media (press, radio, or tv, it doesn’t matter) tumbling over one another to be the first to get the story out. It doesn’t seem to matter if they get it right so long as they get it before the eyes of the public first. Should they be able to report the story with heaps of emotion and hyperbole so much the better. Late on the night of January 3rd and into the wee hours of the 4th we saw the worst of this in action. Rushing to report the story of the miners trapped in West Virginia the reporters failed to confirm what they wanted to hear and reported the finding of 12 men alive. Everyone wanted this to be true. The problem was that it wasn’t. But it took nearly three hours to report the truth. (I was switching back and forth between the cable news stations and the Orange Bowl so I didn’t catch all the reporting. I will say that the desk anchor on Fox News kept asking when they were going to see the survivors and she seemed concerned that they had not seen anyone yet at 1 AM. Whether this concern was due to skepticism or not, I don’t know.)
All around the blogsphere today, the miscommunication has been a premier story. One of the best essays on the subject (and done in a far more eloquent manner than I could do it) is by The Anchoress and is called Emotionalism: bad fuel for the press. I urge you to read it.
(BTW. If you remember the first Die Hard movie—or was it the second, whichever—you’ll remember the obnoxious, self-important reporter who puts every one in jeopardy because he just has to have a scoop. My favorite scene is when Bruce Willis’ character punches the reporter in the mouth when he tries to shove a microphone in his face at the end of the movie. Appropriately enough the reporter is only interested in whether or not the cameraman got the punch on tape.)
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