Speed Kills?

Matt Wagner
mw102906@ohio.edu

My dad taught me from an early age that speed kills in sports. It is not always the tallest or strongest that wreaks havoc on the court, field or pitch, but the speedsters that come out on top. I have adopted my dad's views.

Although speed is a positive attribute in sports, I have come to realize that speed can kill in a negative manner in journalism. In our reading for Thursday, the article from the American Journalism Review entitled "Jumping the Gun" caught my attention in this manner.

In the article, Rem Rider discussed how the many articles published online are done so before they are ready and have all the facts straight. Some of these stories come from media sources with over 100 years of journalistic integrity before the Internet, as in the Wall Street Journal's case with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal. Because of the need to beat others to the story, these type of stories have become the norm rather than the exceptions.

Sports "Jumping the Gun"

Nowhere has this trend been more noticeable than ESPN. Nowadays, the sports' media giant will report speculation on an hourly basis, be it on television or on its Web site. This means ESPN has fallen prey to reporting falsehoods because the company wants to report it first.

NBC Sports called out ESPN on its coverage of the National Football League lockout. On Apr. 29 at around 1 p.m., ESPN reported this: "BREAKING NEWS: Court grants temporary stay of players' injunction, reinstates NFL lockout." As it turned out, the court had yet to make a decision, and ESPN retracted the "news." Of course, ESPN got lucky when the court eventually ruled in favor of the NFL.

ESPN is not the only media outlet to get lucky in this manner. Just last year, The Post published an article concerning Armon Bassett foregoing his senior season at Ohio and entering the NBA Draft. In an attempt to beat everyone else to the story, The Post published the article online and in the paper the next day based off of a couple of players' Facebook statuses. They had no other evidence that Bassett was leaving. I could not find the original article, but as I worked for the sports staff at the time, I knew the story.

The Post, however, eventually did its homework and went to the Registrar's Office, and found out that Bassett had not registered for classes. This was newsworthy and gave the story credit. Still, The Post could have taken a serious credibility hit in just trying to report this story.

Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good, I suppose.

Speed is nice, but accuracy is best

In the above cases, the effect of the Internet on breaking stories first has effected not only that medium but all forms of media. Newspaper, magazines, television and radio must work faster in order to break stories first and gain competitive advantage over the others.

This does not mean that accuracy should suffer, however. The Poynter Institute published on its Web site some of its codes or guidelines for online journalism. It states, "Speed is a core advantage of the medium, but should not compromise accuracy, fairness or other journalism values."

The Poynter Institute realizes that speed is important for online journalism but refuses to give up on the values that give the profession credibility. In a field where credibility is hard to come by, it could be useful to use methods that have been successful.