The Fog of News

posted at 10:43 pm on January 8, 2011 by

At this point most of us have become familiar with “the fog of war”. It’s been interesting today to watch the fog of news reporting about the assassination attempt in Arizona.

This post isn’t about what happened, or why. It’s about how it was reported. There was a while in there, the first couple of hours, where all we knew was that something really bad had happened. Then NPR started running news updates with more solid information. When everyone else was just reporting that there had been a shooting, NPR came through with the news that 7 people, including Representative Giffords, had been killed.

Representative Giffords is married. Her husband is an astronaut and an officer in the Air Force (UPDATE: er, Navy). And I shudder to think of how he must have taken the news that his wife had been murdered — especially since it wasn’t true. The latest word is that there was only one death, a nine year old girl. Representative Giffords has made it through surgery, is awake, and is responding to verbal commands, all of which is very hopeful.

NPR’s report reminds me of the news reporting from New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. It seems that in this day and age some reporters think it’s more important to be first than to be right. (Here’s another particularly egregious example of that kind of thing from a year ago.)

NPR’s early reports today were a classic example of journalistic malpractice, and this kind of thing is far more common than journalists like to admit. It’s one of many reasons why I think that it’s more appropriate to refer to journalism as a craft rather than as a profession.

UPDATE: What can I say? I’m not a journalist, but then I don’t claim to be. There were more than one deaths today. But Representative Giffords wasn’t one of them.

UPDATE 20110109: Well, at least NPR did this right: “NPR apologizes for false report about Giffords“

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While it’s true part of this was a New’s race by each news group to run around and make the most latest extreme claim to get webpage hits/viewer numbers, there is, I am afraid, a more nefarious motive to some of the reports.

When I first saw news of the shooting, it was on Yahoo’s news page, via Reuters, who was also taking info from NPR, early Saturday Afternoon.
They too, were claiming Rep. Giffords was killed, in front of a grocery store in Arizona. And that was it about the shooting.
It then went on to talk about how she was a Democrat, and was re-elected, and view points, amongst which was pro-”immigration reform” and obama-care.

And thus started the rumor mill that “Oh hey this was in Arizona too, so it clearly had to be one of those crazy reich wingers!”
Except one problem, the latest tragedy didn’t follow the media script… so it kept on getting revised to now where, no one seems to know what exactly is going on.
After taking a look around all I gather is this from this crazy mess of poor reporting
Rep. Giffords is not dead, has survived, made it through surgery and is likely to make a recovery (Thank God, I wish her the best and a speedy recovery)
The number of those killed in this tragic shooting is somewhere between 1 and 9 others dead, which may include a Federal judge and a 9 yr old child
The shooter is likely one Jared Lee Loughner, and a possible Youtube channel of his may have been found under the same name, and upon looking at his list of books and videos, is a generic nut case anarchist who had an ego/messiah complex.
That aside from Jared Lee Loughner, there maybe 1-2+ other suspects involved.

Early Sunday morning. this was posted on Yahoo, Once again, another AP writer, hoping to get his/her version of the story to be the accepted one. The claim? That cause for this was clearly the toxic politics, oh and it’s probably right-wingers like Sarah Palins fault…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_politics_threats_analysis

Razgriez on January 9, 2011 at 5:01 AM

Listened to the Internet feed from the local Tucson NPR station just after the shooting, when one of their reporters said they had another reporter “behind police lines”, presumably within the shooting zone perimeter officials had blocked off around the Safeway parking lot. So they had a person in the area, but it was never clear what details they were getting (and if that reporter had any contact with police at the scene while identifying themselves as a reporter, or if they were just talking to others on-site and getting unconfirmed reports, in order to avoid having officers move them outside of the zone).

NPR could have gotten the bad information from on-site rumors, or they could have gotten bad information from someone reporting from the hospital where Giffords was taken. Either way, they really do need to offer up an explanation as to why they went with inaccurate information (as do CNN and Fox, both of which also cited “independent sources” as confirming Giffords’ death. Having someone ‘confirm’ a death because they heard NPR say it is not independent sourcing).

jon1979 on January 9, 2011 at 8:57 AM

Den Beste, you might want to reconsider and remove this post. It would likely be in your own best interest.

audiculous on January 10, 2011 at 4:02 PM