Hacker News Reader

A cursory glance (which ironically is probably what created this dangerous misinformation) suggests to me that news agency haste to be first to announce something was the primary factor in this miscommunication.

I now wonder if pre-internet news was as prone to these kind of mistakes since it took so much longer to publish news (thereby giving sources more time to confirm things).

View on HN

Actually the fact that it took longer to publish and distribute the paper, but it still had to be in everyone’s driveway before work, produced a major time crunch for publishers.

In 1948, for example, the Chicago Tribune assumed Truman would lose the election and published it as fact on the front page in order to make their print deadline.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman

There's at least some truth to that. There was still a lot of time pressure over whether the presses should roll or not. But it wasn't a continuous process that strongly rewarded publishing this very second.

For a filmic example of the process of holding presses and then going with the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBXuyRXNIHE&t=1s

Reply on news.ycombinator.com