October 01, 2005

Put Some Effort Into It

In a rare bit of insight (since all he really does is print tidbits he gets from calling local media types) Tim Cuprisin tells us to beware of initial reports of news stories:

A couple days ago, the column harkened back to early reports of 30,000 deaths in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

The point was to compare it to exaggerated reports from New Orleans in the early days of Hurricane Katrina. And the standing warning is for news consumers to be skeptical of early reports on big stories.

Then came Ashley Smith and her new book this week to prove the point.

...

Thanks to Smith's new book, we now know there were indeed "other things" involved in this tale of heroism, including offering crystal meth from her private stash to Nichols to calm him down.

Smith may still have been gutsy and all, but handing out drugs to her captor dramatically changes the story, or at least complicates it, whether or not she's kicked her drug habit since the ordeal.

And her new book, "Unlikely Angel" demonstrates how it pays to withhold judgment on a news story until time passes.

No condemnation for anyone: none for CNN's Anderson Cooper and his network to going into "angry reporter" mode; no criticism toward conservatives who used the supposed anarchy to demonstrate the harmful effects of the welfare state; not even a request to find out the true story and explain how the reporting went wrong. Ah, but that would require more effort than just paging through a rolodex to find out when a local newscaster is having her baby.

"On Further Review, She's No Angel"