NY Times Ignores Its Own Reporter's Key Tweets In Patting Itself On The Back Over Speed Of Its Bin Laden Coverage
from the weak-sauce dept
A bunch of folks have been passing around a piece from the NY Times' "Public Editor," Arthur Brisbane, from this weekend detailing how the NY Times sprang into action to report on the killing of Osama Bin Laden by US forces a week earlier. It is an interesting read, though, as Felix Salmon notes, if you look at the details, it really shows just how incredibly arrogant and out of touch the NY Times is. There are a few key points:- If you read Brisbane's story alone, you might not realize that many other news organizations had already reported the story before the NY Times did. You might also not realize that it was all over Twitter by the time the NY Times got around to it.
- Salmon points out a particularly damning point, in that Brisbane's coverage focuses mostly on the work of reporter Helene Cooper, who apparently heard from a source at 10:34 that Bin Laden had been killed. At 10:40, she got a story up on the NY Times site, and then another NY Times reporter, Jeff Zeleny, tweeted the story. But... that completely ignores the fact that Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff, Keith Urbahn tweeted the news at 10:24, and the only reason so many people found out about that was because it was retweeted at 10:25 by NY Times reporter Brian Stelter who added the details of Urbahn's connection to Rumsfeld, thus adding credibility to the report.
In other words, nine minutes before Cooper had the news, a different NY Times reporter had already tweeted about the news -- albeit unconfirmed. However, as Salmon notes, it really was Stelter's tweet that helped spread the news:For a very different look at how the Osama news broke check out SocialFlow’s exhaustive analysis of 14.8 million tweets on Sunday night. As far as Twitter is concerned, the news was broken by Keith Urbahn at 10:24pm. But it really got momentum from being retweeted at 10:25pm by NYT media reporter Brian Stelter, who added the crucial information that Urbahn is Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff. Urbahn, here, gets the goal, but Stelter absolutely gets the assist:
- It gets worse. Remember, Cooper only found out the news at 10:34pm. And yet... at 10:33pm, Stelter (again) tweeted that a CBS News producer had confirmed that Bin Laden was dead, via a House Intelligence Committee aide. Brisbane ignores all of this and Salmon points out how ridiculous this is:
How come Brisbane is ignoring all this? Stelter was way ahead of the rest of the NYT, but Brisbane incomprehensibly discounts his excellent work. That might be because he doesn't consider tweeting to be part of a NYT reporter's job; it might be because he doesn't consider retweeting to be reporting. But Brian Stelter is a prime example proving that neither is true. Brisbane should have taken this opportunity to congratulate Stelter on a job extremely well done. Instead, he is completely overlooked, in favor of tweets from Zeleny and Roberts which came out more than a quarter of an hour after Stelter had publicly jumped onto the case. Which, of course, is an eternity in the twittersphere.
- Oh yeah, and throughout Brisbane's piece, at no point does he link to the tweets in question. Hell, he refuses to link to any non-NY Times URL.
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Filed Under: arthur brisbane, brian stelter, helene cooper, journalism, osam bin laden, speed, twitter
Companies: ny times
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The Times covered this?
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Re: The Times covered this?
Private browsing bypasses it, deleting cookies resets your count. Enjoy.
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Re: Re: The Times covered this?
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NY Times ...
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NY Times ...
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The speed of huh?
I think the important point is how the NYT is obviously becoming more and more irrelevant.
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Re: The speed of huh?
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Osama drama
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Re: Osama drama
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Really? Complain about REAL NYT missteps, not this.
1. 16 minutes = old news? Not everyone's tethered to twitter. I caught the breaking story on 24-hour cable news shows. If you add in commercials it was the 21st Century equivalent speed of smoke signals.
2. I think this post misses the point. Helene Cooper CONFIRMED the news story DIRECTLY with a source (and altered her already-written 2 paragraph story from "apprehended Bin Laden" to "killed Bin Laden").
The other NYT reporter was just re-broadcasting someone else's tweets & hadn't confirmed the news themselves.
3. Also, the Public Editor's essay says that all kinds of NYT reporters & photographers were e-mailing back and forth about this from around 10pm on, and describes a NYT photographer's interaction w/ a White House source in that 1st half hour.
Me, I am VERY GLAD that the NYT had a direct source confirm a breaking news story BEFORE posting it on their site.
If I want rumors, I'll pay attention to twitter. I can wait 16 minutes to get news that's been sourced by a journalist.
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Re: Really? Complain about REAL NYT missteps, not this.
Not saying it's "old news." I'm just saying that dissemination is also a key part of journalism, and Stelter did that. His tweet had a much bigger impact than Cooper's reporting.
2. I think this post misses the point. Helene Cooper CONFIRMED the news story DIRECTLY with a source (and altered her already-written 2 paragraph story from "apprehended Bin Laden" to "killed Bin Laden").
No, I got that point. But it's not really relevant here. Which had the bigger impact? Which was more important in the long run? And, remember, Stelter had already pointed to a confirmation before Cooper even got her confirmation.
The other NYT reporter was just re-broadcasting someone else's tweets & hadn't confirmed the news themselves.
Why does that matter?
3. Also, the Public Editor's essay says that all kinds of NYT reporters & photographers were e-mailing back and forth about this from around 10pm on, and describes a NYT photographer's interaction w/ a White House source in that 1st half hour.
Yes, but that's got nothing to do with dissemination...
Me, I am VERY GLAD that the NYT had a direct source confirm a breaking news story BEFORE posting it on their site.
False dichotomy. No one here said that the NY Times should have posted something on their site without confirmation.
Sorry, Jesse, but I think you're reading something into this that I did not say. I'm pointing out that the dissemination of news is a key role for journalists, and Stelter had a huge impact on the dissemination of the news via Twitter... and that gets totally ignored here.
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But, But ...
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Rock
Maybe the Rock too. I still haven't heard any definitive answer as to how Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson tweeted the news also at 10:24, the same time as Urbahn-
"at 10:24 p.m. ET last night, Johnson tweeted, “Just got word that will shock the world – Land of the free… home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”
from http://www.gossipcop.com/the-rock-dwayne-johnson-osama-bin-laden-death-early-twitter-tweet/, complete transcript all over the internet.
I suppose he could have been referencing just about anything because he doesn't actually mention Osama by name, but I can't imagine what else that would be.
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What really matters?
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