Comments
Comment by Stefan:
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How should they have anything worth reporting within minutes?
It’s common procedure to release a short “breaking news” notice just so people know that something noteworthy has happened and later on complement the report with details. That didn’t happen in this case, that’s why people were irritated.
Comment by Stefan:
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To repeat the cynical remark on my blog: I guess three deaths just were’nt enough to qualify for a breaking news or lead story.
Comment by ssp:
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@Stefan:
I still think that those ‘breaking news’ should be founded by facts. And rumors or twitter messages do not qualify as facts. All initial reports seemed to be twitter-based. I am totally happy with journalists not wanting to report on that kind of information.
Also, writing and editing a report takes time and, it may require people to actually go to the site of the event or get in touch with people there. Late in the evening. In a small town. It seems unreasonable to me that the twitterati expect this to be done within minutes. Certainly the people dealing with the explosion will have better things to do than answer press queries at that time. tagesthemen managed to create report (17 minutes in) within an hour. Which I think is quite quick. For their nachtmagazin (about 7:30 in) they even had a (useless) phone-in-‘reporter’ regurgitating the three factoids known on the phone.
Perhaps three deaths aren’t enough of a blood-toll for front-page news (although the yellow-press ‘news’ business seem to love the story this morning), but ultimately it’s not an important story. It’s tragic for the people involved and makes small-town talk this morning, yet nobody else is affected by it.
Comment by Stefan:
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Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not asking journalists to base their reports on tweets, but I think the Göttinger Tageblatt qualifies as a valid source and they had it on their liveticker at 21:41. I think it’s reasonable to expect some sort of notice on the other media within an hour.
Comment by ssp:
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I think the ‘livestream’ at GT was rather vague and contained plenty of twitter messages, making it unclear whether it’s to be taken seriously. They only ‘confirmed’ their earlier statements half an hour later with a 22:07 timestamp. The news were on tagesthemen half an hour after that. I’d say it couldn’t possibly have been in heute-journal which started around the same time the bomb exploded.
Half an hour is a short period of time. Hardly enough for people to establish what happened, let alone pass that on and publish it.
Comment by Bapak:
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Ah, the Internet age, where the depths of journalism and its core trust-building foundations — content standards, ethical guidelines, fact-checking, and copy-editing — should be brushed aside in honor of people’s insatiable love for speed.
