Frederick Reese
The bombing of the Boston Marathon has created an atmosphere of confusion, hurt, pain and anxiety. Typically, the media — removed from the emotions and volatility of the situation — offers society an avenue where it can turn to make sense of the chaotic.
But, recently, the media has been adding to the chaos. Take, for example, the New York Post. On Thursday, the Post ran a story suggesting that two men wielding bags were seen at the site of the marathon explosion. Headlined as “Bag Men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon,” the report created a wave of unsubstantiated speculation that ultimately climaxed when former Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) agent John Miller stated on CBS This Morning that the pictures from the Post’s report were “not the pictures that are going to be released today by the authorities.”
After one of the individuals in the photo announced on Facebook his intent to clear his name, the Post reported that the two men in the photograph had been cleared. However, the Post never apologized for the story. “We stand by our story,” Post editor Col Allan said in a statement sent out early Thursday afternoon. “The image was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday afternoon seeking information about these men, as our story reported. We did not identify them as suspects.”
Untrustworthy reporting
Another example is that of CNN. Self-described “the most trusted name in news,” the network has had to deal with a crumbling facade of accuracy in reporting after June’s misreporting of the Supreme Court’s Affordable Healthcare Act ruling. On Thursday, at 1:42 p.m., The Associated Press (AP) reported that an arrest was “imminent” and that the suspect would be brought to court, per a law enforcement official. One minute later, Reuters, citing a government source, reported that no arrests were made and no suspects were named.
Three minutes later, CNN’s John King — who broke the news that a suspect was identified on video earlier — announced on-air that “an arrest has been made.” In the announcement, King cited two sources — a law enforcement source he personally contacted and an unnamed source that spoke to Fran Townsend, terrorism advisor under President George W. Bush. Fox News, the Boston Globe and CBS Boston all picked up the story, with CBS Boston quickly pulling the report from its website later.
At 1:55 p.m., NBC News’ Pete Williams went on the air to set the record straight, indicating correctly that no arrests were made.
”We’ve been told by several sources that there is no arrest. Then it begins to break down from there, about whether – let’s start at the other end – what do they know?” Williams reported. “Information that is pointing in totally different directions is coming from normally very dependable sources, and we can’t just flip a coin and pick one. We have to have them line up before we can say for sure what it is. All we can say for certain is that all of our sources say no arrest.”
Sticking to your guns
This caused the situation to spin out of control. CNN, Fox News and AP all reiterated that an arrest was made. NBC News, CBS News and ABC News all reported that an arrest was not made. As late as 2:25 p.m., CNN and the Boston Globe were holding their ground.
At 2:28 p.m., the ground underneath CNN and the Boston Globe collapsed. Citing three sources, Tom Fuentes, former assistant director of the FBI, went on CNN and stated that no arrest was made. “There has been no arrest, and in fact a suspect has not been identified by name yet,” he told CNN anchors Chris Cuomo and Anderson Cooper. “They’re looking for someone, but they don’t have anyone in custody yet and they’re looking for identification.”
“Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack,” FBI Special Agent Greg Comcowich said in a written statement. “Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.”
The fact that the media got the story wrong is shocking, but forgivable, considering the chaos of the situation. What makes this situation stunning, however, is the fact that there was no apology for the misreporting. Those involved stood by the time-tested excuse that they used the best information available from the sources available.
This may be acceptable except for one obvious point: NBC News got the story right. So, why did NBC succeed and CNN fail?
The race to the bottom
Once upon a time, a bad report would have ended a career. Editors and journalists would face a wall of recrimination — to emerge from behind it only after groveling apologies, the outlet would commit to a regimen of public remorse and retractions and it would be almost assured that a few choice individuals would become unemployed.
Today, however, such lapses in the public trust are noted with less than a collective shrug. The only true criticism of CNN’s reporting came from Jon Stewart and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” — “This suspect went from ‘definitely caught and heading to federal court’ to ‘WHOOSH!’” Stewart joked. “It’s like a news story, as imagined by M. Night Shyamalan.”
Many feel that the 24-hour-a-day news feed may be to blame for the lack of outrage in the misreporting of this story. “It may be less momentous when you make a mistake because there’s so much news coming and it’s so fast that the next report just overtakes the last one,” said David Westin, president of ABC News from 1997 to 2010. “It used to be you would go on the air and make a formal retraction.”
“This has been somewhat gradual, but I’ve never seen it quite so dramatic in the lack of contrition,” said Edward Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s been given a normative sheen that this is now the media’s job: Pass along when you get it and fix it when it’s wrong.”
In a world of instant feeds and minute-to-minute updates, taking the time to vet a story correctly means that the outlet will be last to cover the story. This has created a virtual “race to the bottom” in regard to accuracy in the news.
Cindy Rakowitz, author of “Emergency Public Relations: Crisis Management in a 3.0 World,” said, “News organizations should say upfront that in a crisis ‘we are doing our best to report the facts as we learn them.’ For example, reasonable copy would include ‘We cannot confirm that … (blah, blah, blah …), but we do know that …’ If the outlet reported facts that were false, they have to justify this and acknowledge that they reported incorrect information. It does not need to be a formal apology, but simply revising the facts and discussing why there was misinformation.”