Network News Needs an Enema!

This past Thursday was a huge news day, we started the morning with more details coming in from the mysterious runaway governor scandal and there were even had a few fresh glimpses into what’s going on in Iran too.  A short while later we learned that Farrah Fawcett had passed away…

Just when we were all able to get the image of Farrah’s famous poster from the 70’s out of our heads and finally return to work we started seeing reports that Michael Jackson was dead on Twitter.  Knowing what I know about social media, I knew not to buy into the story that he was dead just because I saw it on Twitter, but after about an hour or so I noticed the volume of traffic on Twitter and Facebook spike dramatically and there was no one questioning the legitimacy of the story.  Usually when a rumor breaks on the social networks, if it’s not true, it’s squashed or tagged “FAKE” pretty quickly, and I didn’t see anyone disputing the news.

I quickly flipped over to CNN to see what they were reporting, they said that he had been rushed to the hospital, flipped over to Fox, same thing.  I pulled up my favorite tabloid website TMZ and I was shocked to see that they were also reporting his death.  I just assumed that if TMZ and Twitter were both reporting his death that CNN and Fox were soon to follow so I watched for a little while and what I witnessed amazed me…

Both networks, obviously trying to adhere to some code of responsible journalism or something like that, didn’t confirm his death until an hour or two later.  I wasn’t the only one that noticed this either, several people on Twitter mentioned that it looked like CNN and Fox were doing everything they could to keep from saying that he was dead.  Now before you get the wrong idea, I understand the responsibilities that a news agency has to adhere to, and I understand responsible journalism and accurate reporting, I get it. As I sat there and witnessed Harvey Levin’s brainchild, TMZ, beat two of the most powerful news networks in the world to the scoop on possibly the biggest news story of the year by a couple of hours I realized something…

If Network News doesn’t learn to incorporate social media into their reporting a lot better, people are going to stop looking to them first.  A simple disclaimer like, “this is unsubstantiated, but according to the social networks, Michael Jackson has died”, and I honestly thing that could have helped them save face.  I know that CNN has done a great job embracing social media, but it blows my mind how they danced around announcing that he was dead.  Fox News is a distant second in embracing social media, in my opinion, but I honestly thought CNN missed an opportunity to shine on this one.  Eventually CNN did mention that some other news outlets were reporting that he was dead, but they could have just checked Twitter two hours earlier and reported, “okay, half the world is on Twitter right now reporting Michael Jackson is dead” and saved face…