Get it right the first time!
That is what Jon Stewart of The Daily Show practically meant when he emphasized the huge blunder that CNN and Fox News had committed when they wrongly reported on the Supreme Court ruling of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Thanks to electronic news these days, it is easy for mistakes like this remain imprinted in “electronic history”.
At 10:07 AM, Fox News and CNN reported that “individual mandate” provision of the law had been struck down.
*Photo from gossiponthis.com
*Photo from gossiponthis.com
While the Fox News report was retracted shortly after, CNN erroneously kept reporting that the law was “unconstitutional” for the next seven minutes.
CNN and Fox News tried rapidly to fix their error, but the damage was already done as blogs and social networks lit up with posts and comments about their mistakes. There are now many YouTube videos that show the exact report as well, which will increase the chance that a massive audience will be exposed to the incident. This was not possible in the earlier periods in history when everything was ‘word of mouth’
The mainstream media’s misstep is another reason why “context and accuracy” matter more than the speed of news. In a highly-connected news environment, inaccurate stories travel just as fast as the accurate ones. It is true that many people may forget what happened that day, but the networks will have trouble removing this imprint from Internet history.
Leave a response