Media in the New Millennium

Posted by Lisa Greim

As the Michael Jackson story unfolded, I found myself thinking what an odd world we’ve created. The lure of the instant news cycle – 24-hour news, hell, it changes in seconds – means that headlines are breaking out everywhere and it’s left up to us to figure out who’s credible and why.

TMZ and Perez Hilton say he’s dead. LA Times says he’s in a coma. Drudge says dead, but then, he would. Whoops, the LA Times is saying dead! CBS says he’s hospitalized – nope, they broke into their feed to report Jackson died. Hey, Katie Couric says he’s dead, he must be dead! They started to fall like dominoes: Reuters, MSNBC. We were all surfing and refreshing our screens so often it’s no wonder we broke the Internets.

Eventually I got a New York Times breaking news alert that Michael Jackson had demised. Maybe 15 minutes had passed, but it felt like old news.
One of my co-workers would not accept the story until CNN reported it. I’m the same way, but from an older school: Until The Associated Press puts something on the wire, it has not happened. Period.

The AP and New York Times have standards. Fact-checking is tedious and unsexy, but it’s a very good idea. Real reporters don’t like to announce to the universe that somebody is dead unless a credible source confirms it. It is poor form and bad karma. When time is short, “credible” doesn’t have to be a named source, but it does have to be someone that you know would not screw you over.

If you have a trusting relationship with the police commissioner’s driver, you don’t need to talk to the commissioner to be certain of your facts. (Actually, gatekeepers often know the scoop better than their bosses).

At the same time, I was the person who shouted out to our office that Michael Jackson was dead, based on the first TMZ report that crossed Twitter (thank you Jason Calacanis). I believed it. Why?

1)    Credible but sleazy eyewitness sources: You know that TMZ and their kind do checkbook journalism. (PaidContent.org says TMZ paid $62,000 for those shots of Rihanna beaten up.) They no doubt have a rat, um, stringer, in every emergency department between Malibu and Palm Springs. These people may have seen the gurney go by with their own eyes, and their motivation for truthtelling is pure: if they call in a tip and it doesn’t pan out, they don’t get their $25 (or whatever). Ayn Rand would be proud.

2)    Less credible but more numerous non-eyewitnesses repeating hearsay: It was apparently common knowledge all over the hospital, which was locked down for hours after the ambulance arrived. Surely some of those bystanders dropped a dime. A reputable organization then confirms the info. A sleazy one runs with it. “Some guy just called from the UCLA parking garage” may be great color, but it’s not enough to hang a story on.

3)    Reporter instinct: When an ambulance is called at 12:26 p.m. because someone famous isn’t breathing, and the ER is two minutes away, and it’s 3:30 p.m. and nobody is saying anything? The guy’s dead.

The saddest part of all this is that the organizations with standards wound up looking like idiots, at least in the short term. We have to keep reminding people that even in breaking news, the race is not always to the swift.

And if you wouldn’t want your mom finding pictures of YOUR corpse on TMZ, perhaps you should find a less degrading place to get your own news.