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nostromo

Or more recently Steven Hatfill from the 2001 anthrax attacks.

View on HN

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hatfill

Or even more recently Ryan Lanza at Sandy Hook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lanza#Investigation

The media doesn't learn and doesn't care to learn.

UK: Colin Stagg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Rachel_Nickell

Christopher Jeffries http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/16/christopher-jeffrie...

Oz: Lindy Chamberlain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Chamberlain-Creighton

Countless others, and one of the reasons why death-penalties can kill the wrong person

The Central Park Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger_case#Convi...

I think there is a big difference between the news saying "THIS IS THE GUY! THIS IS THE MONSTER!" and people on a forum speculating that "this may be worth looking into further".

The people who turn it into a witch hunt are likely not the people actually using their heads enough to know what to be looking for in the images.

I think there is a big difference between the news saying "THIS IS THE GUY! THIS IS THE MONSTER!" and people on a forum speculating that "this may be worth looking into further".

The problem is that all it takes is one group to start quoting the other, and the effect starts to snowball:

"Internet detectives on the popular website Reddit have identified three possible suspects..."

"[Rival news organization] tonight reported on three new leads. The suspects, Joe Bloggs, Susan Smith and Bill Stickers..."

"Ask Reddit - who of the three suspects do you think is most likely to be behind the attacks?"

Bill Stickers is innocent.

It's usually the second one from the left.

So in LTR languages, the second one?

Bill Stickers Will Be Prosecuted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_cascade

Kudos for the link.

When something like this gets popular, its a matter of time before a major newspaper will publish this on the front page. And that's the beginning of the end for this person, in case he is innocent (which he is, until proven otherwise).

Just wait until the media finds this

They already have.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/mystery-man-on-roof...

Edit: It's another picture though.

Most of these didn't end with lives ruined. With Ryan Lanza, the media corrected the suspect name very quickly. Hatfill got a multimillion dollar settlement from the government, and Jewell ended up on SNL. In all cases the media did learn they were wrong and publicly admit. Certainly they jumped the gun and caused injury, but they did learn and do the right thing eventually.

I'm curious how "ended up on SNL" is a reward.

He got to punch someone dressed up as Janet Reno on national TV!

I'm sure he was not forced to be on SNL, but was offered the opportunity and accepted it. Some people would like to be on TV.

The media learned as in "became informed" but did not learn in the sense that they "improved".

I don't think that's fair to say either. "The media" reports hundreds of names in various capacities every day. Of course they blunder occasionally. You just don't hear about the 99.999% of the time they don't.

I don't think they needed to learn anything. They know it's bad to jump the gun. You still see "Dewey Defeats Truman" jokes.

They just make mistakes. It's easy to criticize a nameless faceless concept like "the media". Individuals in the media are largely upstanding people trying to do the right thing.

Really? looks like Richard Jewell died a pretty horrible death...

You can't blame "the media" for a man's kidney problems.

Having your life destroyed and the depression must have added to it.

natural causes?

I think it's worse than that, as there are incentives (ratings, readership, etc) for them to jump to conclusions like that.

The very fact this post has made it to the top of HN/Reddit/4Chan, is incentive enough for similar communities to start searching for needles in those haystacks of photos. I guess we can expect more such "observations" from the crowd :-|

It wasn't the media that decided that Richard Jewell and Steven Hatfill were "persons of interest," it was the FBI.

With recent news about someone "watching a race while brown" (an injured Saudi's home is searched while he's being treated for injuries) I don't hold a lot of hope for accurate and careful policing.

The FBI very much leaked those names though. It wasn't an accident.

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