Is the Need to be ‘First’ Hurting News Reporting?

The desire for news networks to be the first to break a story isn’t anything new. From the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline to the “exclusive” story from The New York Post about John Kerry picking Dick Gephardt to be his running mate, to news services incorrectly tweeting Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died after being shot, news outlets often try to get the scoop on each other. So when both CNN and Fox News misunderstood the Supreme Court’s ruling on the groundbreaking health care law and mistakenly announced it was unconstitutional, it wasn’t the first time major news networks got it wrong. What it did though, was showcase how the competition to be first, especially in the era of social media, can lead to putting speed ahead of accuracy.

Years ago “breaking news” for news outlets meant reporting about something that happened within the past few hours. Facts were checked, camera crews were dispersed, graphics were created, and the story was covered. Things began to change with the rise of the Internet. Now breaking news could be posted quickly on a news station’s website before going live with it on television. The explosion of social media, especially with social networks such as Twitter, means news is now being delivered in real-time.

Many news and information outlets resisted using social media to begin with and even banned their reporters from accessing Twitter while at work. Now almost every news outlet or personality is on Twitter. The New York Times has over 200 Twitter accounts listed on its website (they’ve come a long way since banning the word “tweet”). A quick look at The Weather Channel shows the network has five different official Twitter accounts to go along with the personal Twitter accounts for almost every on-camera meteorologist. With news networks bringing their scoop mentality to the realm of social media—where there is already a healthy desire to be first—it will be interesting to see if there are more errors such as this is the future.

Have you ever believed a breaking story was true after reading about it on a social network only to find out later it wasn’t?