Friday, April 23, 2004
Oh, that liberal media
Columbia Crew Mistakenly Identified As Iraqi War Casualties' - headline, NASA press release.
Many news organizations across the country are mistakenly identifying the flag-draped caskets of the Space Shuttle Columbia's crew as those of war casualties from Iraq.
Fact-checking is a lost art.
UPDATE: I think I titled this post wrong. To be fair, it wasn't the media's liberality that drove it -- in a few cases at least -- to publish the photos of the wrong coffins. It was the need for speed. We have found that speed is a more important basis for competition in newsgathering than credibility.
'
Many news organizations across the country are mistakenly identifying the flag-draped caskets of the Space Shuttle Columbia's crew as those of war casualties from Iraq.
Fact-checking is a lost art.
UPDATE: I think I titled this post wrong. To be fair, it wasn't the media's liberality that drove it -- in a few cases at least -- to publish the photos of the wrong coffins. It was the need for speed. We have found that speed is a more important basis for competition in newsgathering than credibility.