Many of you heard about the tragic shooting of eight people in Appomattox this past week. Some of you may have also heard about the media coverage that was present, and the usual critical comments that follow such a scene.
At least one poster to the local ABC affiliate website lamented that they were scooped by the affil in Richmond - a further distance to Appomattox than Lynchburg to Appomattox. I don't know if that was true or not, but shouldn't the number one priority of any reporting be to get the facts correct? Too often with past events the competition of local stations leads to "being first" as the main reason for coverage, instead of "being right."
As a viewer, I would rather a station present accurate facts the first time, instead of retracting over and over because they rushed to present the story "first." Also, is it necessary to hold news conferences about a tragedy hours apart, if the only "update" is to say you have no new information? Just some thoughts...
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I rely almost exclusively on the Internet for news coverage, Chris, for reasons you outline in this post. Commercial TV news is motivated by keeping you from switching channels -- they have an incentive to report gossip and rumors.
ReplyDeleteI don't like video as a medium for news reporting because it is too linear -- I don't like somebody dictating to me what to think about something. Print media -- and I consider the Internet more a print medium in this regard -- allow me to skip around, collect information and make up my own mind.