November 15, 2024

Behind Premature Reports of Joe Paterno’s Death

The false reports required a public reaction from Mr. Paterno’s family and were embarrassing for the news organizations involved, including CBS Sports, The Huffington Post and an arm of MSNBC.com called BreakingNews.com.

Widely shared (and then even more widely denounced) on Twitter and Facebook, the situation called to mind the false claims that Representative Gabrielle Giffords had been killed in a mass shooting in Tucson one year ago. She had been gravely wounded, but not killed.

The response was similar, too. There were apologies by the news organizations and a rush of attention paid to the sometimes precarious race to be among the first to report news.

The specific problems on Saturday night stemmed from flaws in sourcing. Rumors swirled earlier in the day about Mr. Paterno’s health, prompting the family to confirm that his condition was serious. The editors of an independent student publication at Pennsylvania State University, Onward State, were aware of those rumors when two writers independently heard about an e-mail that had ostensibly been sent to Penn State athletes about Mr. Paterno’s death, the publication said in an analysis on Sunday. The e-mail was a hoax, but the editors did not know that. Neither writer had seen it, and one of the two “had not been honest in his information,” according to the analysis.

But a Twitter message was sent and an article was written by Onward State on Saturday evening saying that the coach had died, leading national news organizations like CBSSports.com to follow suit. Links to the reports were shared online by hundreds of journalists, athletes and others; most linked to CBS.

Within an hour, a spokesman for the Paterno family denied the reports — and soon thereafter two of Mr. Paterno’s sons even used Twitter to deny them personally.

The managing editor of Onward State, Devon Edwards, later said in an e-mail to his boss that “sadness turned to shock and panic as I realized that I had made the mistake of a lifetime.”

CBS said in a statement that it had failed “to verify the original report.” The Huffington Post said it had failed to attribute its article to a source.

Mr. Edwards swiftly resigned, though the publication said Sunday that he would remain a staff member.

“The lesson for everyone should be that accuracy still matters,” said Lou Ferrara, the managing editor for sports, entertainment and multimedia for The Associated Press. The news agency published a Twitter message debunking the death reports and, later in the night, explained what had happened in news reports because the bogus online information had wider implications for media outlets. Other news organizations did the same, hoping to correct the misinformation proliferating online.

The existence of social media tools do not need to force news organizations to compromise their standards, he said. “If anything, this is when news organizations need them most,” he said.

He added in an e-mail on Sunday: “It reminds me of the early days of the Net, when people thought the digital revolution would result in a lowering of journalistic standards. Such lowering only happens if we allow it to.”

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Media Decoder: Top Social Topics in ’11: Bin Laden and Mubarak

Osama bin LadenAssociated PressOsama bin Laden

Almost two-thirds of adults who used the Internet in 2011 also belonged to social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Most people said they adopted these tools to stay connected with relatives and friends, new and old, the Pew study found. But what were they saying and sharing, beyond a baby’s first words, prom photos and other personal status updates?

Facebook and Twitter, two of the largest social platforms, issued year-end lists last month that provide insight into the topics that drove the conversation in 2011.

Osama bin Laden topped the list of global topics discussed on Facebook, which has 800 million users worldwide. What ranked No. 2? It was not the royal wedding, or Kim Kardashian’s wedding (and breakup). It was the Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl. No. 3 was the news of Casey Anthony’s acquittal in the killing of her daughter, Caylee, 2.

At No. 4, Charlie Sheen’s well-documented problems surpassed conversation about the death of Steve Jobs. This put Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton in sixth place, ahead of the death of the British singer Amy Winehouse, the release of the video game Call of Duty MW3, military operations in Libya and Hurricane Irene.

The most shared article in the United States on Facebook, however, was a link from The New York Times showing a collection of satellite photos of Japan, before and after the earthquake and tsunami.

For Twitter users, the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was the hottest news topic, followed by the raid in which Bin Laden was killed, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya.

The top hashtag in 2011 on Twitter was #egypt.

The ending of the final game of the FIFA Women’s World Cup prompted the most Twitter tweets per second in 2011. That is a metric Twitter uses to measure the intensity of conversation about a single event. There were 7,196 tweets per second for the end of the game, compared with the 5,106 per second generated by the killing of Bin Laden.

“The most-shared stories have a couple of things in common: They are subjects that are compelling or fascinating at a human-interest level,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. “Most people don’t have conversations about the latest doings of Congress or the Federal Reserve Board; they talk about things with a human, often celebrity face on them. And these stories are almost always fueled by traditional media.”

Facebook also made top 10 lists of musicians, athletes, television shows and movies discussed on the platform. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” the final installment in the series, was the most-discussed movie. “House” was No. 1 on the list for television shows. “Pretty Little Liars” was the most-discussed television show on Twitter.

In sports Lionel Messi, the Argentine soccer star who plays for FC Barcelona, was the most-talked-about athlete on Facebook.

The top soccer player talked about on Twitter was Wayne Rooney of England.

The Facebook page with the most highly engaged audience in 2011? It was not Justin Bieber’s or Lady Gaga’s. The Jesus Daily, run by a doctor from North Carolina who posts inspiring words of Jesus from Scripture, maintained the top spot for most of the year.

“Spiritual groups are one of the oldest forms of social networks,” Mr. Rainie said. “They understood a fundamental truth about networks eons before the Internet existed: The most effective way to get things done and to survive is to form a community.”

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Long Battle on Debt Ending as Senate Set for Final Vote

Despite the tension and uncertainty that has surrounded efforts to raise the debt ceiling, the vote of 269 to 161 was relatively strong in support of the plan, which would cut more than $2.1 trillion in government spending over 10 years while extending the borrowing authority of the Treasury Department. It would also create a powerful new joint Congressional committee to recommend broad changes in spending — and possibly in tax policy — to reduce the deficit.

Scores of Democrats initially held back from voting, to force Republicans to register their positions first. Then, as the time for voting wound down, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, returned to the floor for the first time since being shot in January and voted for the bill to jubilant applause and embraces from her colleagues. It provided an unexpected, unifying ending to a fierce standoff in the House.

The Senate, where approval is considered likely, is scheduled to vote at noon on Tuesday and then send the measure to Mr. Obama less than 12 hours before the time when the Treasury Department has said it could become unable to meet all of its financial obligations.

The deal sets in motion a substantial shift in fiscal policy at a moment when the economic recovery appears especially fragile. Although the actual spending cuts in the next year or two would be relatively modest in the context of a $3.7 trillion federal budget, they would represent the beginning of a new era of restraint at a time when unemployment remains above 9 percent, growth is slowing and there are few good policy options for giving the economy a stimulative kick.

The precise impact on the economy is a matter of debate. Proponents of spending restraint say that the economy will benefit in the long run from getting the deficit and the accumulated national debt under control, and that failure to act now would risk long-term decline in the nation’s economic might. Others say that by foreclosing the option of using government spending to counteract economic weakness, the country is increasing the risk of persistently high unemployment and even another recession.

The negotiations exposed deep fissures within both parties. In the end, 174 Republicans and 95 Democrats backed the deal, and 66 Republicans and 95 Democrats voted against it. But Republicans and Democrats alike made clear they were not happy swallowing the agreement, which was struck late Sunday between the bipartisan leadership of Congress and President Obama.

Top lawmakers characterized the bill as a must-pass measure needed to prevent a potentially crippling blow to the struggling economy.

“The default of the United States is not an option,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat.

Mr. Hoyer urged lawmakers to vote not as members of either party, but as “Americans concerned about the fiscal posture of their country, about the confidence that people around the world have in the American dollar.”

Republicans, while expressing dissatisfaction that the measure did not provide more savings, said it was a modest but useful first step in reversing the government’s spending course and claimed they had prevailed by keeping the agreement free of new revenue and offsetting the increase in the debt limit with spending cuts.

“I would like to say this bill solves our problems,” said Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a prominent fiscal hawk in the Republican leadership. “It doesn’t. It is a solid  first step.”

Worried about defections by conservatives and liberals alike, leaders of both parties gathered their members for briefings to explain the proposal. Speaker John A. Boehner met specially with Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee, an important voting bloc whose members were raising alarms about potential spending cuts for the Pentagon.

Democrats, many disgruntled over what they saw as a White House-negotiated giveaway to Republicans, heard from Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who told House and Senate members in separate meetings that the administration had to cut the deal with uncompromising Republicans to avoid a default.

Mr. Biden spent hours behind closed doors in the Capitol. According to participants in the meetings, he mixed listening and gentle persuasion, urging Democrats to back the plan.

Administration officials fanned out to make a case that the deal’s structure — with a trigger that could force deep cuts in military spending as well as in domestic programs if the two parties cannot agree on how to reduce the deficit further — provided Democrats with more leverage to push for higher tax revenue as part of the solution rather than relying totally on spending cuts.

But many Democrats said they saw it as a deal negotiated on the backs of poor and working-class Americans, with no sacrifice by the rich in the form of tax increases.

“I wouldn’t call it anger, but we are perplexed that it has turned out like it has,” said Representative G. K. Butterfield, Democrat of North Carolina, grimacing as he left the Biden meeting. “But we’ve run out of options and we know the consequences. I’ve heard horror stories from the Great Depression. I don’t want my fingerprints on that.”

Jeff Zeleny and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=01b40c80364f098b80b75c80ada4fa68