I had to share this with members of the journalism list. It is less dramatic and surprising than it is symptomatic of the problems that arise in a 24 hour, hair-trigger system of news gathering in which speed often trumps context and accuracy.  

 

At 1:02 EDT today, Fox news issued a bulletin stating:  "Chemical vials discovered at U.N. headquarters in New York City."  Since alerting my students in Journalism and Society to follow the trajectory of this story, I have been watching it unfold in a variety of media. 

 

Why is this an interesting case to bring up on the list? Because 40 minutes after the Fox bulletin, when no other news outlet had issued a special bulletin, I reviewed all the existing news content on the Internet and discovered something less surprising that disturbing.

 

At 12:43 PM., almost fifteen minutes before Fox posted this open ended bulletin, without including any details or context,  NBC local news had already reported the story. The NBC story, though, added the key contextual detail that the vials had been discovered earlier in the day by U.N. workers among items that had been brought back from Iraq by weapons inspectors. 

 

This is not to suggest that the vials are not dangerous. But I find this yet another example of an ambiguous e-mail news bulletin being issued less to inform an audience than to attract it. Why did Fox leave the bulletin open-ended after details had already emerged that minimized the possibility that this might have been an act of terrorism?  My view, certainly open to debate, is that the bulletin was highly irresponsible, given the information that was available at the time it was issued.  

 

By the way, I know that Fox makes an easy target.  But as someone who watches this process of Internet bulletins, confirmations, clarifications, and retractions very closely, I can tell you that it is not by any means limited to any one news outlet.

 

Steve