Scoops turn ugly when they're wrong

A friend of mine texted me on Wednesday, frustrated by the fact that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address had overrun her Twitter feed. More to the point, she was frustrated by all the journalist types trying to beat all the other journalist types to the punch with specific points of his address.

“I’ve noticed the reporters that tweet excessively seem to have less of a filter, report more emotionally than you see on TV, and sometimes in an effort to beat others to a scoop, are blasting erroneous info to the world,” she said to me. “This rant was brought to you by my exasperation over receiving too many (imho) tweets about the governor’s address today.”

I told her that Twitter has complicated the news industry. The immediacy of the news seems to be more important these days than the accuracy of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I want my news now, too. I use the Internet, and specifically Twitter, to keep up on breaking news items all the time. I only watched two Buffalo Bills game all season long. The others I “watched” via Twitter, checking in occasionally to see how the team was doing.

“I’m big on being right. But as a reporter, there is also a big focus on being first,” I told her. And then it hit me. Getting a scoop is still a really big deal. In the days before Twitter and Facebook and 24/7 websites, you either beat your competition in the next day’s print or you didn’t. Now us journalist types have to try to beat everyone online. Twitter. Facebook. Whatever.

And when you’re first — speaking as a journalist type here — there’s an incredible, almost undefinable sense of pride. I tried long and hard to think of a real-life comparison to share with non-journalist types. Failing miserably, I turned to the Internet to ask my Facebook friends, many of whom are journalist types themselves.

Below are some of what they consider to be comparable real-life situations:

• Walking down the street, minding your own business, and finding a $50 bill on the ground.
• Maybe a sports (pro or not) comparison: like being the teammate who makes the winning play in the championship game.
• Christmas morning when you open that gift you REALLY wanted.
• Perhaps landing a new job ... or a first kiss.
• Getting a date with a girl that you thought wouldn’t give you the time of day.

As you can see, those are pretty big deals. Scoops are the capital of journalism. They make our world go ‘round.

But if the scoop is wrong, what we’ve got is a counterfeit $50; making the winning play and then having it called back because of a foul; opening the gift you wanted and immediately dropping it, fracturing it into 1,000 pieces; landing the new job but failing the drug test … or kissing the girl and finding out she wasn’t a girl; getting a date with the girl, and getting stood up.

To exacerbate matters, incorrect scoops lead the public to mistrust journalist types generally. And then they assume you spent your whole life spending counterfeits and kissing transvestites.

So to my journalist friends who put speed ahead of accuracy: Stop it. You’re making us all look bad.

Scott Leffler is a journalist type who has never spent a counterfeit $50 bill or kissed a transvestite — to the best of his knowledge. Follow him on Twitter @scottleffler and he’ll be sure to tell you immediately if he ever does.

The Internet was just crazy this week

I believe Denis Leary put it best when he said on Twitter, “Remember - if you see a Sharknado, stay in your car and do not follow it. Unless you live in Florida.”

It’s subtle but it ties in two of the top trending items on social media for the week — the George Zimmerman trial and the SyFy original movie, Sharknado. Add in the controversy surrounding Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s face gracing the cover of Rolling Stone, and you pretty much have the entirety of the Internet for the week.

Let’s start with the Zimmerman trial. I can’t say I was shocked when I heard Saturday night that he was acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin, but I was appalled. That said, I’m much less inclined to believe that it was some sort of racist conspiracy to let Zimmerman get out of jail free as that it was a case of justice and the law not always being the same thing.

I wasn’t there. You weren’t there. And to be honest, neither of us even watched much of the trial, right? But that sure doesn’t seem to stop people from complaining (or rejoicing) about it online.

There’s only two people that know exactly what happened … and one of them is dead. So only Zimmerman knows how it all went down. But the puzzle was pieced together by a number of witnesses and those witnesses talked to the jury. The jury, in turn, was instructed exactly what the law is and concluded that the charges didn’t fit the situation.

Do I think the ruling was just? I do not. Do I think it was correct — according to the law? I regretfully believe that it was.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, sharks got sucked out of the ocean by a huge tornado and dropped into the streets to wreak terror on the good citizens therein. At least that was the premise of Sharknado, the movie that took Twitter by storm (shoutout to Clip Smith for the inspiration for the bad pun) last Thursday.

Almost everyone I knew — and everyone I didn’t know — seemed to be watching the low-budget b-grade movie live and discussing it on the 140-character social media site. In fact, 318,232 tweets relating to Sharknado were sent during the premiere broadcast.

I had to catch it off the DVR, missing out on the sarcastic live play-by-play on Twitter. I watched it Saturday morning, expecting it to be horribly awesome. Or awesomely horrible. Let’s just say I was half right.

Rumors are swirling that a sequel is planned which will drop sharks on New York City. Two words: I’m in.

Meanwhile, in Boston, people are incredibly agitated that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wasn’t made to look like a mass murderer on the cover of Rolling Stone. From what I can gather the image is too complimentary and thus “glorifies” Tsarnaev.

Anybody remember when Time ran a bad (and doctored) photo of O.J. Simpson? They took a lot of heat for it — and rightfully so. It lacked journalistic integrity.

It’s not the media’s job to make people look good — or bad. Could they have specifically looked for a photo that made him look like a terrorist? Maybe. Would it have been ethical? No.

Look, Rolling Stone is in the magazine-selling business. Why use a bad photo when you have a good one that you can use? Does that mean they’re making him a rock star? No. It means they’re selling magazines.

I’m sorry that not all terrorists are scarred and wearing turbans and eye patches. But misguided people’s perceptions of what a terrorist looks like should not be Rolling Stone’s concern.

And that … is what happened on the Internet this week.

Scott Leffler likes sharks and justice but not terrorism. He really likes Twitter. Find him there @scottleffler.

We need to be careful where we get our news

I had a love-hate relationship with my profession last week.

It started with frustration over an AP photo from the Boston Marathon bombing. The photo in question showed a man in a wheelchair being wheeled away from the site of the bombing. The caption for the photo didn’t give the man’s name and that frustrated me to no end.

I thought it was very distasteful to show a closeup of a man severely injured and not take the time to get the man’s name. I was concerned for his wellbeing and had no way to find out if he was OK or not. I was fearful of using a photo of someone that may have ended up dying in the blast. I thought to do so would be classless. So I didn’t use it. In fact, none of the papers in this newsgroup used the photo — I’m happy to report.

It continued with all of the erroneous reports from — primarily — TV news saying there were more bombs than there were ... and that the suspects were caught ... and the use of photos of people that may be the suspects. One such case had the New York Post showing front-page photos of two men they said were suspects in the case. As it turns out, they were not.

The race to be first, it would seem, has replaced the need to be right for many news organizations. Just as the desire for sensationalism has replaced any semblance of decorum among many news organizations.

Another example of news-gone-awry was the alleged release of “the suspects” names via a Boston police scanner — followed by several Twitter posts with those names — followed by thousands of retweets of those posts. Within minutes the names of two men unconnected to the case went from a police scanner in Boston to the entirety of the internet due to the rapid response of social media.

Many news organizations picked up on that and used Twitter as a source of information, saying that the details came from Boston police, which Boston PD denies.

The timing was odd as just a week prior a local bank was robbed and the name of the suspect went out over the police scanner. Later that evening we got a press release from the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office about the robbery but they didn’t list the name of the suspect that had gone out over the scanner so we didn’t print it. The decision was made that it was better to be a day late on getting this person’s name out than to have the wrong name published and tarnish someone’s reputation without cause.

As it turns out, the name that went over the scanner was the same as the name of the woman they eventually arrested. But I would still make that same decision again. From my perspective, being right outweighs being first. Every time.

The 24-hour news cycle, coupled with social media has made a mess of the news.

Facebook and Twitter are certainly useful means of communication. But they’re unfiltered and should be taken with a proverbial grain of salt. They shouldn’t be used as sources for media. And they shouldn’t be confused with being vetted media. To be clear, I’m not saying that having access to the most up-to-date news is a bad thing. Not at all. But I am saying that we need to be careful to distinguish between news and supposition.

And by “we” I mean readers and reporters alike. If the mainstream media starts acting like a bunch of bloggers, that’s how we’re all going to end up.

Scott Leffler considers himself a writer with a full-time job editing. He also blogs, Facebooks, Instagrams and tweets @scottleffler.

Bits and pieces ...

It’s easy in this fast-paced world we live in to lose sight of the big picture .I think a lot of people did that this past week when President Obama visited Buffalo.

All anyone seemed to want to talk about was that he had chosen Duff’s over Anchor Bar for wings and that some woman called him a “hottie.” I heard very little conversation on the substance of his speech.

Of course, I’m not sure his speech had much substance, to be honest with you. But it was the reason he was here. And yet, we’re talking about cougars and chicken wings.

Chicken wings and cougars must be the modern-day version of bread and circus.

•••

For some reason or another, I wasn’t interested in seeing the president while he was here. I’m sure I could have easily gotten press credentials for one of the things on his to-do list, but I made no effort whatsoever. I’m not even sure why.

In 2004, when President Bush was in town, I made sure to go see him.

Knowing what you know about me, it’s odd, right? That I’d make an effort to see Bush and not Obama. I’m still trying to figure out what that means.

•••

Of course, with most live events, you get a better view from your couch than from the event itself. Think of all the things you miss when you’re at a Bills game that you see on TV. Then again, it’s really the atmosphere that you’re there for. I could sit home and listen to Pearl Jam any time, but going to the concert last Monday was something special. It really is the atmosphere. And oftentimes, the company.

•••

That said, local TV did a great job covering the presidential visit. I caught some of Channel 2’s coverage and was forced to watch some of Channel 4’s. I’m going to assume that Channel 7’s was similar in scope to the other two.

Radio, on the other hand, didn’t do as good a job in my opinion. I checked three different stations, all of the news-talk variety. Only one of them really covered the visit. And they used the audio feed from one of the TV stations to do it. But it was better than the satellite-fed talk shows on the other two.

•••

It seems to me that the world is shrinking all the time. Maybe it’s because I make such an effort to stay connected, whether it’s through Facebook or Twitter or my cell phone or my latest greatest method of connectivity, foursquare.

Foursquare is an application for your phone which uses your GPS to allow you to tell your friends where you’re at. It seemed silly at first, but it’s fun when you get into it.

This past weekend, I noticed that one friend of mine and I were never more than a few blocks apart, despite the fact that we were all over the Buffalo region. Another friend of mine and I were actually at the Buffalo Zoo at the same time, although we didn’t run into each other. Was just weird, I guess.

You may recall I mentioned a while ago that I was apartment hunting and it went well. As it turns out, I now live down the street from a friend of mine, a fact I didn’t know until after moving in. Making this more strange is that I have recently discovered that two other pairs of friends live down the street from each other. One pair knows each other, but didn’t know they lived so close. The other pair only know each other’s names … and only because I’ve mentioned them to each other.

Maybe this is common and we don’t know it. Maybe we should just pay attention better.

Of course, it doesn’t matter how small the world is if you don’t take your face out of your phone to actually talk to the person next to you.

I think that’s the real big picture.