Projo Subterranean Homepage News

My friend Doc Searls offers his view of the Web's handling of the breaking news of Michael Jackson's death: Living Ends.

This twitter post, from @KNX1070 four minutes ago, says Michael Jackson is dead. Google News' latest, from Fox, says he's being rushed to the hospital. Here's the latest Google search, as of 3:42pm Pacific:

Oh, but there's a backstory. I was right in the thick of it. Here's what I wrote in comments at Doc's:

June 25, 2009 at 7:03 pm Sheila Lennon

Doc, I just left the newsroom, and the problem was confirmation. TMZ.com said he was dead, but the family was arriving at his bedside and no one at the hospital would confirm his condition, any condition.

Some news orgs went with, "Report: Michael Jackson dies," quoting TMZ's unknown source, but most of us just made pages/modules/blog posts and waited for the green light to upload them.

Nobody wants to have to retract a death announcement, and what difference does it make if you wait to make sure it's really true. (In the old days, "UPI gets it first, AP gets it right" was a truism.)

Finally, AP got somebody knowledgeable but unauthorized -- (the source is known but not named) -- to confirm, and we all uploaded.

and

June 25, 2009 at 7:17 pm Sheila Lennon
Afterthought: One source is not enough.

Maybe TMZ has people all over Hollywood who know to call them. But hoaxsters or exaggeraters could call, too. I watched Twitter atwitter, but all over TMZ, if it was linked at all.

Finally, AP seems to have gotten a hospital or family insider to confirm. The AP editors know the name of that source and called it credible, even if they agreed not to name the source, lest he/she be fired for telling the rest of us what was really happening.

Nobody would confirm he was dead.

Andrea heard it first. I immediately went to the L.A. Times and TMZ. Both had that Jackson had been taken to the hospital (UCLA Medical Center). Then TMZ switched to "Michael Jackson dies."

In the newsroom, I told people it had happened, who was reporting it and how. I told them TMZ (who?) had had the video of Patriots QB Tom Brady in a walking cast before the 2008 Super Bowl.

Several news orgs blogged the early report of his hospitalization, noting they were trying to confirm.

There was no discussion. We discussed some logistics -- what sort of Breaking News widget to use -- but we waited. I thought TMZ's source was real and right, but that's just a hunch. Lots of twitterers had the same hunch. But the mental discipline of journalism says it's better to be slow than be wrong.

"It sounds like it's true" just isn't good enough.

AP's email that the hospital was about to have a newser (news conference) was the signal. Donna had everything ready when "Michael Jackson dies" finally moved.

(Friday updates: Romenesko -- the "inside media" blog at Poynter Institute -- gathers links on the sourcing issue.

Via MeFi, Australian TV ran with the later-denied death tweets yesterday about actor Jeff Goldblum, complete with tribute video. A commenter: "As an Aussie I hang my head in shame at Channel Nine broadcasting Goldblum's death as fact. Channel Seven broke MJ's death by one of their correspondents reading it off his Twitter feed.")

RIP, Michael. You and Farrah Fawcett together at the Pearly Gates is a mind-boggling image.

#michaeljackson on Twitter.

The Official Michael Jackson Youtube Channel

 Tags  journalism Michael Jackson

---

1 Comments

tracey vandyk said:

To Micheals family we are sorry to hear of the loss of your son and brother he was an icon pop and rock we will all miss for him for years to come from the van Dyk family Durban South Africa3

Link | June 26, 2009 4:36 PM
Report Abuse

---

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.