The failure of the news media

    Friday's coverage of the horrific shooting incident in Newtown,Connecticut has shown the news media for what it has become.  A repeater of information that has not been thoroughly vetted and in some instances, just plain made up.
    My first career was in radio and television, most all of it in radio or TV news.  I graduated in 1977 from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale with a major in Radio-TV. I had begun working at my hometown's radio station when I was 15 and had by 3rd Class License, with Broadcast Endorsement from the FCC before my 16th birthday. This was in the day when you actually had to go to one of the FCC's field offices and take tests in order to get your license to be an broadcast engineer, and in the case of many small radio stations, to be on the air, because you were your own engineer/ board operator when  you were on the air. Also at that time there were 3 over the air television networks, plus PBS,  and only a handful of radio networks. If your station (either radio or tv)  wasn't a network affiliate, you had to rely on a wire service, either Associated Press (AP) or United Press International (UPI), for your non-local news.
     The station I worked for was an affiliate of  AP Radio News and also an AP news wire affiliate. We had a teletype machine in the newsroom on which the station owner had mounted a closed circuit TV camera. The camera fed a monitor mounted in the main studio so that the on-air person could monitor the AP wire for breaking news.  Anything coming across with more than three bells, (a bell mounted in the teletype machine went off once at the end of each article or to announce breaking news), was to be read as it came across the teletype.  Major breaking news was proceeded by  an apostrophe ( ' )  sign. Each  apostrophe sign caused the bell to ring once. Three bells was an urgent message, five or more bells was a bulletin, up to ten bells.  As the board operator / on air person we were to interrupt programming anytime we had a bulletin (five or more bells) , and read  the bulletin live as it came across the teletype.  We were at the mercy of the AP editors to make sure the news we were giving our listeners was correct. And most of the time it was. Quite often the event in a bulletin had actually happened minutes or even hours before. Unless it was something that was being followed closely, such as a vote in congress, a space mission or some other "planned news or sports event".  News items did not go out over the wire until they had been confirmed, from at least two independent sources. And after the initial bulletin, the wire usually resumed its normal operation, until there was a update on the breaking news event.  This was also the case with the television networks.  A news anchor would interrupt normal programming for a brief announcement, ending with a reminder to stay tuned for further developments or to tune into that evenings newscast for the story. Not often did the networks go with continuous coverage of a breaking news event. News people understood it took time to gather the facts, check out the details and to write a clear, cohesive and comprehensive story.
      Now we have 24 hour news networks and social media all pressing to present the news in real time, not sometime later this evening.  Instead of a story like Newtown being given 10 minutes as the top story in the evening newscast, it now gets 10 hours or more of continuous coverage, which does not give reporters on site, who are on the air almost continuously on a story like this, time (and I will argue that many don't have the training or ability) to actually research the facts and report on the story. They are forced to report rumors, or "facts" that have not been checked out by producers or editors. In my day, unless you had at least two independent sources, you did not report something as a 'fact'.  And twitter,  facebook and other internet sites are not reputable, independent sources. Nor are other media outlets.  Nor are"experts" brought in to interpret or give their opinions on the ' facts' of the story, which leads to more 'facts' that get added to the story continues to be repeated over and over.
       We are now finding out on Sunday, that many of the 'facts'  of the story as reported on Friday were wrong. But those 'facts' are still what people believe because they were repeated so often that they became the 'truth'.
       Sorry to say, this is all too common in today's journalism.  Stories are put out without proper research and editing. Unfortunately, good journalism takes time. Its fine to show raw video or sound of a news event, but don't follow it with "expert analysis" offered as 'fact'. Your guess is as good as mine in that situation, because neither one of us is there, nor have we talked to anyone who was. Let the reporters and field producers do their job and develop the story. A network can run a crawl on the screen with the basic known facts of the story on a continuous basis, as you report on the other stories of the day, and come back to that story whenever your resources have new information that is truly factual. I know there is pressure to be first with the story, but in my day, it was more important to be first and to be right than to be first and wrong. You didn't win viewers or increase your reputation by being wrong. As a reporter, if you were wrong too many times (which usually was more than once) or were wrong on a big story, you were out of a job, and probably had a hard time finding a new one. Now you  are said to be aggressive, willing to go with your instincts or a risk taker.  Sorry, you are still wrong, and that is not the way news should be presented.
So everyone back off a bit, do thorough and honest reporting. Give the story a chance to develop and make sure that before you go on the air, that you know that what your are reporting is correct and factual.