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| Joe Paterno |
CONTACT: Desiree Y. Torres
813-481-0415
desiree.torres@snhu.edu
Joe Paterno is not dead…yet!
What if someone were told they were “dead”
before it really happened?
STATE COLLEGE, PA - One of the many people who were fooled by an
inaccuracy in Joe Paterno’s death read a tweet sent from Onward State, the
student website which covers stories at Penn State University, on Saturday
January 21, 2012. The public was told Paterno
passed away a whole day before he actually did. Big time media outlets such as
CBSSports.com and the Huffington Post read this tweet from one of the Onward
State writers and spread the word on their sites before doing any research
about the true story. Essentially, these sites killed Paterno off publicly prior
to him really being gone.
This incident is a perfect example of what not to do when a
story breaks. Had each news outlet done their own investigation, they would
have known that the original sources of Onward State were considered credible
because of an e-mail. An e-mail that anyone could have sent. The writers of
this student website did not follow the journalism rules of ethics, but that’s
no excuse for professional media companies to follow suit.
With social media growing more each day, errors such as this
one are likely to happen more online versus than in print. When printing a
newspaper or magazine, the reporters are forced to delve deeper for accurate
information because once something has been printed, it is harder to take back.
Online content can be deleted just as quickly as it is posted. There are only
so many retractions a journalist can publish before their credibility is shot.
###
Facebook Post: The Tweet heard
around the world…the football world that is!
Desiree,
ReplyDeleteYou are so right, there are only so many retractions that a credible journalist can publish before they are no longer considered credible. We live in a time where social media has increased a journalist desire to print a story first. Accuracy is taking the back seat, and why shouldn't it? You can always apologize and retract later!
Hi Desiree,
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job on the press release and facebook assignment. Everything was well covered including the false report of his death and how the error took place. The issue of this false reporting being a problem with media seeking to report the story first before checking the sources. This was a well written and informative piece.
Marie