Media credibility

Credibility: Rush for a  "scoop" - U.S. media competition led to serious mistakes... Amid the coverage of the attacks in Boston, journalists were disclosing information without checking their veracity and created embarrassing situations for TVs and newspapers.

Source: CartaCapital

The student Barhoun Salah, 17, did not believe seeing the headline in the New York Post, last Thursday (18/04). In a picture taken at the edge of the track of the Boston Marathon, he and his coach appeared on the cover of the tabloid. The headline read: "Men's backpack," followed by the warning: "Feds Seek these two."

Everything was left to the speculation of amateur investigators on the Internet forum Reddit, which showed both in a picture of the site of the explosions.

The photo had been quickly published by the New York tabloid, without any verification.

The newspaper also committed other errors reporting that there were 12 dead - there were three - and pointed to one Saudi citizen suspect that had nothing to do with the attacks.

 Negative influence of social networks

In the opinion of the media critic of The New York Times, Joe Concha, social networks like Twitter and Facebook have hindered more than helped the news about the attack. "Now, there is not only the pressure of the competition between broadcasters, but also competition with Twitter.  It induces the media to precipitate."

Soon after the attacks, FoxNews, the most successful news channel in the United States, "paid a monkey" to disclose that a third explosion occurred at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, in Dorchester. As finally reported later, the supposed explosion was just a small fire.

Worse was on the television station CNN, FoxNews competitor, and the news agency Associated Press (AP). The veteran CNN reporter John King proudly announced last Wednesday:  "There was a prisoner in custody. My informant with the  Boston police said: 'We got him.' " And King continued, giving details of a video in which supposedly "one sees a dark-skinned man put a backpack on the site of the second explosion."

FoxNews and other media outlets began to work with this information. Then the AP news reported that the prisoner was already on his way to court and hundreds of journalists ran to the door of the court of Justice.

Just an hour and a half later, John King is seen on CNN denying the same - also exclusively - their supposed breaking exclusive information: "There is important progress, but no arrests. Whoever spoke of the prisoner captured was putting the cart before the horse."

Speed ​​versus credibility

The credibility of both CNN and AP were shaken. Other traditional media outlets also published false speculations drawn from Twitter and Internet rumors.

According to Erik Wemple, media specialist for the Washington Post, the press should return to its good old virtues, forgotten in the chaos: "Check the facts and, if in doubt, put precision in front of speed. Perhaps the time has come for the media to say, let's wait for confirmation through a press conference or an official statement."

Although the image of CNN suffered concussions last week, its new boss, Jeff Zucker, seems to have reason to be pleased with the ratings, which increased to 200% for coverage of the attack in Boston. Nearly 3 million viewers tuned in to the station every day - their highest numbers since the beginning of the Iraq War, ten years ago.



Translated from the Portuguese version by:

Lisa Karpova
Pravda.Ru