[Scan-DC] "Careless reporting" or Journalistic snobs attacking crime reporters, Fox5 and Twitter?

Thu Sep 26 12:07:45 EDT 2013

As someone currently working in news I can give the following observations:

There are not many of us who are truly aware of how emergency communications work and the caveats you must consider when using scanner traffic as an information choice. Mistakes like the ones described here were likely made by people who listen on the Internet streams and don't have a history of scanning, and don't have an idea of how chaos sounds on a radio.

As far as the reaction pieces, I have to take those with a grain of salt. Each reaction story does a good job of tearing down the credibility of their competitors. There are other motives. Folkenflik used to work for the Baltimore Sun and had a reputation for hating TV news ops.

There are ways you can use scanner traffic in breaking news. You just have to be smart and careful about it.

Sadly there are very few of us left who have a clue about the art of scanning.

On Sep 26, 2013, at 11:26, "Doug Kitchener" <oldsdoug at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Interesting.  Nothing wrong with reporting what's heard on the scanner, as long as it's qualified with that fact... i.e. "heard on the scanner, car 1-adam-12 reports the shooter possibly down" or something like that.
>
> Anyone who listens to a scanner regularly knows how these events unfold... at the time no one knows what's really going on and that there can always be a certain amount of speculation, misinformation, incorrect conclusions, etc.  (Example, originally there were three shooters at the Navy Yard).
>
> Unfortunately, not everyone realizes that.  Also, there'll always be lots of second-guessing, Monday-morning quarterbacking, and 20/20 hindsight, and that will be by experts, people who think they're experts, and people who don't have a clue.
>
> All that the reporters at the scene can do is what they feel is their best effort at the time, attempting to be as clear as possible and try to correct any errors as they go along.  Any reasonable person is going to realize that there can easily be glitches.
>
> DK
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Alan Henney <alan at henney.com>
>> To: Scan DC <Scan-DC at mailman.qth.net>
>> Cc:
>> Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 12:27 AM
>> Subject: [Scan-DC] "Careless reporting" or Journalistic snobs attacking       crime reporters, Fox5 and Twitter?
>>
>>
>> Now that the dust has started to settle over the Navy Yard, should we be
>> troubled by this continued pattern of the main-stream "journalists"
>> bashing their colleagues and crime/local news reporters and Twitter users who
>> monitor scanners and report what they hear?
>>
>> I sense a struggle between the get-it-right people who will write you a term
>> paper [NEXT WEEK] on what happened today and those guys in the trenches of news
>> gathering who are struggling to report the news as they receive it, NOW.
>>
>> Of course there will be mistakes.
>>
>> Do the journalistic snobs have any clue that there is hardly anything left that
>> isn't already encrypted these days?  Do they care?  How much longer are they
>> going to blame the scanner listeners?
>>
>> No worries.  We go after the Twitter folks next.  We have already seen that
>> shift.
>>
>> Having been in the news business myself, I certainly would be careful about what
>> I would pass along from ANY source.
>>
>> I remember my old journalism teacher... attribution, attribution, attribution.
>> It would certainly help if TV people would consider more attribution, but
>> attribution does not read as nicely on TV as it does in print.
>>
>> "Information" newsrooms receive from spokespersons can be just as
>> flawed as that gotten from scanners, even worse, but it is taken as fact, just
>> because it comes from an official source [not our fault if it's wrong?].  It
>> often lacks the detail that the scanner community enjoys.  Sadly, public
>> information offices have gotten incredibly lazy.  The public is unaware of these
>> problems because the "journalists" are afraid to bite the hand that
>> [spoon] feeds them and complain about the incredible lazy PIO staff.
>>
>> We're fighting the natural evolution of a news story.  Admit it.
>>
>> I say cut the folks at Fox 5 a break and God bless Twitter [I think the
>> term-paper editors are simply envious].
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> -------
>>
>>
>> Spartan Daily: San Jose State University
>>
>> September 23, 2013 Monday
>>
>> Careless reporting and inaccurate details is a recipe for disaster
>>
>> BYLINE: Juan Reyes
>>
>> SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 1
>>
>> LENGTH: 910 words
>>
>> There's no mystery that news outlets have been known to mess up a story from
>> time to time due to the incompetence of true reporting.
>>
>> The world of social media and the technology used to disseminate breaking news
>> should be utilized responsibly and there's minimal room, or sometimes none
>> at all, for critical errors in the industry of journalism.
>>
>> But recently the big dogs at CNN, CBS and NBC have not been up to par when it
>> comes to accurate reporting during a time of chaos and to be honest I think
>> it's pure laziness along with a dash of an "I don't give a shit
>> mentality."
>>
>> When the horrific shooting took place in Washington D.C. on September 16, the
>> buffoons over at FOX 5 DC posted tweets like "Scanner: Woman - shot in the
>> shoulder - awaiting help - atop a roof on grounds of Wash Navy Yard," and
>> "AT LEAST 5 PEOPLE SHOT - WASH NAVY YARD."
>>
>> Really? They posted new bits of details every five to ten minutes just the way I
>> would for a local high school football game and to top it off, they reported
>> sensitive, and maybe flawed, material on their Twitter feed.
>>
>> NBC and CBS News didn't learn a lesson when they identified the Navy Yard
>> shooter in last week's affair but realized it was false information and
>> quickly removed all of their tweets. According to Rem Rieder of USA Today News,
>> a Twitter feed from Charlie Kaye of CBS read, "BREAKING. ?@johnmillercbs
>> advises the initial reports identifying the suspected shooter as Rollie Chance
>> are wrong."
>>
>> I thought it was a smart move by CNN not to report anything this time around
>> since their tiny blunder about the police making an arrest on an alleged suspect
>> in the Boston Marathon bombing on April 14.
>>
>> The New York Post originally reported the story of a Saudi Arabian man being
>> held under suspicion of the bombing and was guarded at a local hospital. It
>> turned out he was only a witness and not the "person of interest" the
>> cops were looking for.
>>
>> The New York Post claimed they received information from John Miller of CBS
>> News, and a former associate director at the FBI, about the so-called suspect of
>> the bombing that was taken into custody.
>>
>> The newspaper company also reported 12 people were killed in the attack and
>> posted a picture of a different group of alleged bombers. They were wrong again
>> and it turned out to be three deaths, not 12 and everyone the New York Post had
>> accused as the bomber was eventually released.
>>
>> It just boggles my mind how these journalists have so much experience under
>> their belts and the one thing they can't do right is gather precise
>> information from legitimate sources, it's amateur reporting at its finest.
>>
>> They choose to rely on random intelligence from a police scanner radio and then
>> compete against other reporters to be the first one to get the information out
>> without confirming if it's true or not.
>>
>> I think it's a big problem that news outlets are treating the craftsmanship
>> of reporting as a game of immediacy. Companies are pushing to get their stuff
>> out first and have lost the patience to gather trustworthy facts for a genuine
>> and factual story.
>>
>> Don't get me wrong, I like coming in first place just as the person next to
>> me, but not when it comes to reporting artificial details and a bunch of
>> nonsense.
>>
>> I saw an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and he had some words to say
>> about the recent poor reporting done during the Washington D.C. incident. He was
>> baffled on the nonsense CNN was showing on TV.
>>
>> For example, Stewart played a montage of clips from a report done by Brian Todd
>> of CNN going into detail about his surroundings and nothing about the shooting.
>> The final excerpt showed a helicopter flying by and Todd saying,
>> "That's about as low as we've seen him go so that's an
>> interesting development."
>>
>> Stewart replied to the clip in frustration, "No, No. That's not an
>> interesting development. Those aren't interesting developments. You're
>> just standing in front of a camera naming shit you see."
>>
>> "It's like walking down the street with a five-year-old," he
>> added.
>>
>> But let's be honest, this isn't the first time phony details from
>> supposedly reliable news sources have come into play and it definitely won't
>> be the last.
>>
>> In 1912, the New York Times reported a story that stemmed from a set of fake
>> telegraphs and they ended up writing that the Titanic had not gone down, but was
>> actually on its way to Halifax. Sadly, that wasn't the case and the lack of
>> proper investigating made the folks at the New York Times look like fools.
>>
>> Last, but definitely never forgotten, there's the Sandy Hook Elementary
>> incident that took place on Dec. 14, 2012. CNN broke the news that Ryan Lanza
>> was the alleged shooter when it turned out it was actually Adam, not Ryan. A
>> local report also said Adam Lanza's dad was killed and CBS News reported
>> there was a second gunman in custody, both turned out to be inaccurate.
>>
>> I'm sure some bad reporting had a lot to do with the authorities giving out
>> the wrong details, but even I know better than to wait for a final police report
>> where statements and names go on record. I would rather have my news story come
>> out a little later with the exact facts then some garbage with phony details.
>>
>> Not only does it save my ass from keeping a job but it also won't make me
>> look like an ignorant moron that blabbers a bunch of hogwash information.
>> Don't get me wrong, the name of the game in journalism is to get the news
>> out as fast as possible, but what's the use of getting a story out quickly
>> if it turns out to be a fairy tale in the end?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> National Public Radio
>>
>> September 17, 2013 Tuesday
>>
>> SHOW: All Things Considered 08:00 PM EST
>>
>> Why Outlets Often Get It Wrong In Breaking News Coverage
>>
>> ANCHORS: David Folkenflik, Audie Cornish
>>
>> LENGTH: 665 words
>>
>> AUDIE CORNISH: As news traveled about the mass shootings at the Navy Yard, there
>> were some missteps by the media. At first, some news outlets reported there were
>> up to three different gunmen. So far, that's turned out not to be the case.
>> There were reports that there was a second shooting at Bolling Air Force Base;
>> that turned out not to be the case. Never mind the conflicting number of
>> casualties reported as the tragedy unfolded.
>>
>> NPR's media correspondent, David Folkenflik, was wary of the emerging
>> information; and he posted this on his Twitter account: Reports amid breaking
>> news are provisional and often wrong.
>>
>> So does breaking news need this warning label? David is here to talk more. And
>> David, let's talk about this warning label. Is it - I don't know if
>> it's for the media, the news sources or the audience itself. But let's
>> start with the new sources.
>>
>> DAVID FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think that what you have is an incredible
>> fragmentation of information. I mean, in a city like D.C., you have not only
>> local and federal officials, but you also have military police converging on the
>> site. You have first responders. You've got people at the hospitals. All of
>> these folks have a couple of tiles here and there, of a much larger mosaic.
>> It's unreasonable for journalists to expect that these sources are going to
>> know everything in the immediate aftermath of a terrible incident like this,
>> particularly one that is continuing to play out.
>>
>> AUDIE CORNISH: At the same time, that's our job, right? Reporters are
>> supposed to run down and verify this information. Are we letting them off the
>> hook?
>>
>> DAVID FOLKENFLIK: Well, look - I mean, I think news organizations made a number
>> of things that proved to be errors of fact. And they also proved to make some
>> errors of judgment. WTTG, I believe - the Fox station down in Washington -
>> picked things off the police scanner. That's, in some ways - sounds like
>> it's a very innovative move. After all, you can hear the communications of
>> law enforcement officials. But it's raw information. It's untested. And
>> there is no, you know, scanner channel that says these are the things we're
>> retracting, that we said earlier.
>>
>> News organizations are expected to chase these things down. They're also
>> expected to show some discretion, to make sure that unless it's pinned down,
>> that they don't put it out on the air or online. And yet, that's a
>> really hard thing to do in this day and age.
>>
>> AUDIE CORNISH: And then, let's talk about the audience, which more and more
>> is participating in gathering the news, right? I mean, social media. Is it a
>> problem in these breaking news situations, or an innovation?
>>
>> DAVID FOLKENFLIK: Well, I'd say both. I would say that through social media,
>> what we used to think of as the audience - the public - is both gathering
>> information, sharing information - sharing context, at times; also sharing a lot
>> of misinformation, and relaying things that the news organizations or others
>> have gotten wrong.
>>
>> Sometimes, they're sharing a photograph from what turns out to be a
>> completely different incident - as occurred today, apparently, in the New York
>> Daily News. Sometimes they're sharing context that doesn't prove to be
>> true, as happened - BuzzFeed did an entire article on the basis of the idea that
>> the shooter was using an AR-15; it now it appears that was not the weapon that
>> he used.
>>
>> So the audience does all those things and at the same time, they expect
>> instantaneous information not only on social media, but also from more
>> conventional news organizations like the cable networks. And our expectations as
>> an audience, has to be shifted a little bit. We have to know that in the
>> aftermath of developing events, that those two things are incompatible -
>> authoritativeness and immediacy; and that we can't expect news organizations
>> to provide us exactly what happened right away. Those two things can't be
>> knit together.
>>
>> AUDIE CORNISH: That's NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik. David,
>> thank you.
>>
>> DAVID FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
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