Of course they didn't. Mostly because they just wanted to have the story "first", and secondly because most of them either don't have editors / fact-checkers or don't care about them.
It's the price we pay for getting news as fast as we do.
It's the price we pay for getting news as fast as we do.
The expectation for immediate news is damaging in a lot of ways, this one is just the worst and most visible.
The idea that getting things fast and wrong is a staple of "media in general" is ridiculous. The vast majority of the media acquitted themselves fine here.
I'm perfectly aware of what I can read. I wish blogs were a bit higher-standard, so I could enjoy them as well without the reservations that it requires.
EDIT: Okay, now that you've ninja-edited in a second paragraph, I'll respond to that too.
Even CNN is guilty of this. "This Just In" during Hurricane Sandy ran some Twitter troll's report of the NYSE flooding. Remember Ryan Lanza? Yep, "This Just In" as well. Half of the rest of the world sees the story on CNN.com and says, hey, that's a confirm, it aired on CNN! It's probably an associate producer manning the desk straight out of J-school, and that big "Publish" button is pretty God damned alluring.
Something about blogs, even under the CNN umbrella, seems to make facts a second-class citizen. "Breaking" doesn't mean the same thing that it did a couple decades ago, and integrity is crumbling with Internet journalism.