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

[Ed Tobias]

No, Doug there IS something wrong with reporting what's heard on the scanner 
without verifying it.  No journalist worth his salt would do that.  We don't 
report speculation or rumors.  We don't say, "well, if we're wrong we'll 
just correct it later."  The rule we follow is "get it first, but first get 
it right."

If you want to hear unconfirmed, and sometimes totally wrong, information 
listen to your scanner.....as we all do.  Share it, as many of us do, with 
this group...but it shouldn't be put out to the general public.

Also, legally, there is uncertainty about whether it's permissible to 
divulge what you hear on a public safety channel.  In the old days there 
used to be a strict rule that you couldn't, but the FCC's web site is now 
vague about what content you can share:

"Section 705 prohibits a person from using an intercepted radio 
communication for his or her own benefit. One court held that, under this 
provision, a taxicab company may sue its competitor for wrongfully 
intercepting and using for its benefit radio communications between the 
company’s dispatchers and drivers. A more recent Supreme Court decision, 
however, questions the ability of the government to regulate the disclosure 
of legally-obtained radio communications, and this area of the law remains 
unsettled."

Another good reason to use what's being heard only as a tip....but VERIFY it 
before putting it on the air, or printing it, or tweeting it.


Ed


-----Original Message----- 
From: Doug Kitchener
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 11:26 AM
To: Alan Henney ; Scan DC
Subject: Re: [Scan-DC] "Careless reporting" or Journalistic snobsattacking 
crime reporters, Fox5 and Twitter?

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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