July 15, 2024
Reporting following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has been broadly criticized. Some of them were the consequence of news media not knowing what happened.
Every major publication has a standard for independently verifying facts before publication. Some of these headlines appear egregious in retrospect – reports of President Trump “falling,” for example – but better to verify information than to push information before they know if it’s true. Their headlines were accurate when they were initially posted and were changed as they were able to confirm information, but not without great criticism on social media.
Our reporting guidelines require that we not use that term until law enforcement describes it as an assassination attempt if/when the investigation supports that designation. It is a measured approach for accuracy. There will be plenty of time to go further as needed.
— Kelly O’Donnell (@KellyO) July 14, 2024
Reporting is expected instantly in the age of 24/7 media and tweets that can come out far before a fleshed-out story is published. It’s not news that many of these publications are running on smaller staffs than ever. Pair that with the bare-bones staff typically working on a weekend evening, and it’s to be expected that multiple iterations would come out as reporters and editors can verify information. As Catherine Herridge said, “Technology’s never been better, but the reporting’s never been worse.”
That said, some reporting has no excuse — front pages boasted truly abhorrent headlines the following day far after the major facts were known.
Worst of all, the Denver Post, which highlighted only the death of the gunman:
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch failed to mention that nagging detail that this was an assassination attempt:
The Sacramento Bee did not think this was the main story of the day, and based on headline alone, readers could assume Trump sprained his ankle, not that he was shot:
And then came the opinion pieces – while opinion is not usually our priority, the vetting some of these legacy outlets clearly did not extend to their standards in publishing columns.
From Sky News:
And from Forbes, which has since deleted the piece altogether:
Did your local news outlet bungle coverage of the Pennsylvania assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump? AIM wants to know. Submit your worst of by emailing info@aim.org.
Source: American Military News Rephrased By: InfoArmed