The Rush To Be Wrong
How lower standards sparked the panic on the Potomac
In October 2002, while covering the infamous Washington DC sniper story, CNN Justice Correspondent Kelli Arena stubbornly refused to go on the air with unverified information — information, it later turned out that had been fabricated by a New York Times reporter. Kelli’s intransigence in the face of intense pressure was a virtue that prevented the kind of embarrassing lapse CNN suffered this past Friday, when it mistook a training exercise on the Potomac River for a possible terrorist attack and rushed on the air with its bogus account.
[CNN Jumps the Gun on Coast Guard Story – Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2009]
Sadly, Kelli Arena is not at CNN anymore, and neither apparently is the journalistic ethos that responsible news organizations don’t report unverified information that could panic the public.
[Full disclosure: both Kelli Arena and I left CNN in December of 2008.]
What fooled CNN into “breaking news” mode was realistic-sounding radio transmissions from the Coast Guard as it conducted a routine drill to practice procedures to be used in the event a private boat attempted to breach the security zone it set up on the river. [CNN Transcript: Suspicious Vessel in the Potomac]
There’s an irony here. CNN is one of the few networks that still routinely monitors police radios to get a jump on news. It’s a bit of a lost art. As an old radio reporter I listened to scanners all the time. And they produced plenty of scoops for me over the years, but as any good police reporter knows, you never, NEVER, report information heard over a scanner without getting verification. Never. It’s basic journalism 101. And it would seem that CNN, believing it would get a jump on a potential major story, violated this inviolate rule. (When I was at CNN I got plenty of tips from our desk that came from overheard police or fire department transmissions, but that’s what they were — “tips,” to be checked out. Not “initial reports” to be put on the air only to be corrected later.)
Now CNN is certainly not the first major news organization that has allowed its competitive instincts to overwhelm its better judgment. Nor will it be the last. But how this story played out illustrates a number of ways the “new media” environment has lowered standards that are already hovering dangerously close to the ground.
[CNN Video: Confusion on the Potomac – Sept 11, 10:00 a.m.]
Here are some factors present in today’s media universe that contributed to, and culminated in, CNN’s inexcusable lapse:
Too Good to Check?
The first and biggest mistake CNN made was rushing to air without waiting to get confirmation from the Coast Guard. This seems so basic that it’s mindboggling how it could happen. But here’s why. CNN absolutely believed it had a big story on its hands, and it had heard it with its own ears. Everything fed that perception. The Coast Guard was saying nothing. If it were only a drill, usually they would know that right away. But if something were going on, only then would authorities be reluctant to give a statement until they could gather the facts. I’m sure if the people listening to the police radio had heard any hint that indicated the event might be an exercise, it would have prompted CNN to employ more caution. But everyone in the newsroom listened as the radio crackled with the chilling transmission, “We have expended 10 rounds.” Adrenaline flowed. The President was nearby. It was Sept 11th. Twenty minutes had passed and the Coast Guard seemed to be stonewalling, insisting it still didn’t know what was going on. Finally CNN could contain itself no longer. Convinced it was sitting on a major story, the folks in charge rolled the dice and went with it, and figured they would get confirmation later.
First with the Scoop, First with the Correction: Win/Win!
CNN knew it didn’t have the full story. But in the internet age, no one waits for the full story anymore. Not even newspapers, which publish quick writes on their web pages to stay competitive long before a more thoughtful version is published in the paper. In fact the 24/7 information marketplace seems to reward rushing to air or the web with initial, incomplete, and often inaccurate reports. This is not seen as irresponsibly spreading information before it’s confirmed, nailed down, or fleshed out, rather it’s seen as getting on the record with the news that something is happening. Then, as the story is calibrated, corrected, downscaled, and sometimes dropped by the end of the day, each revision is treated as a separate scoop. So instead of scoring just one “first” with a single accurate, complete report, the news organization racks up a series of “firsts” intended to keep the viewers/readers coming back for more. First with the bad report, first with the better report, and finally first with real report. It’s a win/win/win!
Lack of Adult Supervision
Another factor at play here is the dwindling ranks of experienced people in the newsroom, who are grounded in the basic tenets of journalism. I’ll bet some of the “graybeards” at CNN knew better than to go to air with that report, but none of them apparently were in a position to stop it. Some senior editor should have stood up and shouted, “Wait! We’re not reporting this until we nail it down.” But if any such protestation was made, it fell on deaf ears of the anxious show producers who, unfortunately, sometimes lack the wisdom and experience to make sophisticated judgments. When it comes to “TV news,” they often know more about “TV” than “news.” On most days, that’s good enough. On Friday it wasn’t.
Follow the Leader—“It’s Out There”
We also saw another phenomenon of our modern information age on display. The “it’s-out-there-so-we-have-to-report-it” justification for passing on and thereby amplifying erroneous reporting. When I first joined CNN in the early 1990s our policy was that reports from another news agency would be checked before they were re-reported. If we had any reason to think the report was inaccurate we didn’t report it. If we matched it, we reported it based on what our sources said, sometimes giving nod to whoever broke the story. If we couldn’t match it, but we thought it was important and credible, we reported it with proper attribution, and noting what our own reporting showed. By the time I left, that standard had changed. CNN’s current policy is to re-report anything from a credible major news organization right away, and check on it after the fact. The idea is to be “first” to re-report the story. But the hair-trigger policy is also a prescription for making bad reporting even worse. We saw the British news agency Reuters fall into that trap with its bulletin: “Coast Guard Fired on Suspicious Boat on Potomac River in Central Washington, DC.—CNN,” issued seven minutes after CNN first reported the story. A spokeswoman for Thomson Reuters quoted in the Washington Post was unapologetic about following CNN’s flawed reporting, “We have an obligation to our clients to publish information that could move financial markets, and this story certainly had the potential to do that,” said Courtney Dolan.
No, actually Reuters you have it backwards. When it comes to information that could move financial markets, you have a responsibility to separate rumor from fact. News organizations act like they have no choice but to be wrong, like serial killers they just can’t help themselves. That is a total abdication of responsibility, and Reuters should be embarrassed to offer that specious defense. The Associated Press, by the way, did not run the unconfirmed report.
[River drill shakes up DC on 9/11 anniversary — AP]
Can You Play?
Another insidious aspect of the “rush to be wrong” trend is the speculation that fills the information vacuum until facts can be unearthed. In this respect, all-news television can reinforce the worst tendencies of its reporters. It is fed by the desire of producers to keep the coverage going on a breaking story even when they have run out of fresh information. They call their correspondents and contributors with this question, “Can you play?” Meaning can you come on the air and say something about what’s going on. The standard here is, can you “say something,” not “do you have something worthwhile to say?” This results in a lot of people babbling on the air who should be out checking the facts, instead of offering facile and fatuous observations. CNN did this by calling on its experts and correspondents to weigh in even when they obviously knew nothing about what was going on. As a friend of mine, a veteran reporter, commented to me, “What I did not hear anyone say was, ‘according to my sources at the FBI, or according my sources at the Pentagon…’ ”.
Olympic Conclusion Jumping
There are many examples of sensational, erroneous and incomplete reports being aired, only to see them dialed back and put in perspective as the day goes on. But usually the game is played in a way that inoculates the news organization from the opprobrium heaped on CNN. For one thing the initial reports are usually qualified, with some “weasel words,” that provide cover if the report turns out to be wrong, such as, “First reports indicate,” or “We don’t know for sure, but it appears” or “It would be irresponsible to speculate, but this has all the earmarks of…” That kind of thing. Meanwhile the news organization is then free to jump to a conclusion before all the facts are in, and if by chance it has jumped to the right conclusion it can pat itself on the back for being smart and ahead of everyone else. If it jumps to the wrong conclusion it can simply point to the qualifiers, and insist well they never really said what they seemed to indicating. If CNN had said, “We don’t know what’s going on out on the Potomac, but we have overheard some radio transmissions and we are checking to see if it’s a drill or the real thing,” they would have been able to defend themselves, while still inciting unnecessary panic. Unfortunately, that’s how the hype game is usually played. The idea of waiting until you know what’s going on is just too old fashioned. MSNBC, whose first report accurately reported the event was a training exercise, was able to tweak Fox and CNN by saying their network “took a few minutes to gather the facts before going to air.”
Lack of Accountability
The last point I’ll make is that CNN should admit it screwed up big time, take its lumps, and make some changes to prevent a repeat. But instead the network seems to be trying to shift the blame onto the Coast Guard for conducting its drill on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote, “Here’s some advice: Don’t pretend to shoot terrorists near the Pentagon on Sept. 11 with the president nearby.” [For Coast Guard and CNN, an Exercise in Embarrassment – Washington Post, Sept 12, 2009] The implication seems to be that the Coast Guard failed in its planning to take into account the irresponsibility of the news media. The agency should have known that some news organization would eavesdrop on its radio transmission and irresponsibly rush to air without confirming the information, causing a panic. Well, actually, maybe that’s true. But it’s a sad commentary on the state of journalism.
Tags: CNN, Media, Scare, Security
