> Media did not identify the "wrong Ryan Lanza." BuzzFeed, Gawker and Mediaite correctly reported on the Facebook profile of the person who turned out to be the older brother of the alleged gunman — and they did so when he was the person being identified by law enforcement to CNN as the shooter.
This is wrong in a few ways. First:
As I understand it, "identified by law enforcement" was some guy in the Connecticut State Police talking to the media without authorization. The designated media contact of the local police, Lt. Vance, was correcting misinformation that was perpetuated by the media and Internet all day. Ryan Lanza was only one of many "facts" that grew legs and ran around the planet, to borrow from Twain. There were so many rumors, many of them perpetuated by the awful "This Just In" live blog on CNN, that were just shown to be blatantly untrue less than an hour later.
I've seen "This Just In" get it so horribly wrong on stories in the interest of speed in the past, particularly with Hurricane Sandy and Twitter (like when they wrote about the stock exchange being flooded based on some Twitter troll, and all the networks ran with it). Real news organizations, like the old stalwarts of CBS & Co., like to wait for a double confirmation. It appears that "This Just In" is being treated as a confirm (since "CNN reported it") by many organizations, even though the bar for truth is abysmally low on that blog. They don't even retract, even though they have the capability. They leave the untruth published, but update later saying "earlier we reported a lie. Sorry 'bout that, it isn't true".
Second:
They didn't "correctly report on the older brother". Half of the developed world ran a story similar to "LOOK AT THE FACE OF THIS STONE COLD KILLER. HERE HE IS". Whatever BuzzFeed needs to tell themselves to sleep better at night, I guess.
Third:
There is an argument that has taken hold in Europe that we should never identify the killer, or omit their last name, in circumstances like this. I sympathize with it extensively, along with the notion that we shouldn't run 24-hour coverage on this to glorify the killer (a common complaint from criminal psychiatrists). If it were against the rules to identify a killer, this would have never happened.
This is why all news organizations should double-confirm before ever releasing a fact with as much gravity as this. Hell, double-confirm everything. The irresponsibility displayed by the media and the ease of which a life can be destroyed in the age of the Internet are simply too dramatic for rush decisions any more. We need to have a culture shift toward being acceptable to waiting a few minutes to be told something is going on, if it means we can be more sure that we're reporting the truth. What point is a fact that we know within seconds if it's not even a fact? If journalism is reporting untruths, what purpose does journalism have in the public interest?
I entirely blame CNN here, and "This Just In" specifically. They got somebody to talk to them in the State Police who didn't know what he was talking about, they ran with it, and they ruined this kid's life. I'd like to see "This Just In" closed entirely, and the Associate Producer that got the duty of updating the blog post that day apologize personally to Ryan.
There is a systemic disease developing inside CNN, completely due to the Web, and it's beginning to infect downstream media. Please, CNN producer if you're reading this (which you should be if you're searching for tech stories), be better.