Amanda Knox Is Guilty... Of Making Newspapers Jump The Gun On Guilty Headlines
from the dewey-beats-truman dept
Almost certainly the most famous case of incorrect headlines by a newspaper trying to rush to press early goes to the infamous Dewey Defeats Truman headline in the Chicago Tribune, published on November 3, 1948... which was, of course, actually the day that Truman defeated Dewey.![](https://i.imgur.com/Lx11K.jpg)
But it appears that the eager button pushers in various newsrooms simply heard "guilty" and hit "publish" on the "guilty" versions of the story. Malcolm Coles' blog presented a bunch of evidence of various newspapers going live with the "guilty version."
![](https://i.imgur.com/RvSC0.png)
![](https://i.imgur.com/6KMP6.png)
![](https://i.imgur.com/1teYG.png)
As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.The various newspapers that published the "wrong" story quickly updated to the "correct" one -- almost certainly also pre-written with similar details of "reactions" that hadn't actually happened at the time of writing. But that also resulted in some interesting juxtaposition while Google News had competing headlines from the same sources:
A few feet away Meredith's mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said on a 'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.
Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.
![](https://i.imgur.com/vDQNf.png)
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Filed Under: amanda knox, guilty, headlines, journalism
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stop it already
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Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
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Re: stop it already
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Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
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... libel laws ...
... Uh oh.
Best hope those rags have a few penny pouches on the standby, love. I've a feeling they're going to need them once those "emotions" run their course.
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Made up statements?
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Find it here first... with global competition, it only gets worse.
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The news isn't news anymore
It doesn't mean they're accurate. They're making stuff up just to fill the holes. They get caught out on this stuff a lot more than just a few times.
They're creating news for the most part, and then advertising that some of the media are "fair and balanced".
That is: Fair to their advertising and balanced on their profit sheets.
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Re: Made up statements?
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Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
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Who said journalism is dead?
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Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
I'll take my chances with bloggers, thank you.
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Like old sports reporting
(Not to mention that many people follow cases like this as they follow sport)
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Defamation
This is how it played out in my imagination:
the reporters heard the judge say "The Defendant is found GUILTY".. Now to the word "guilty" is like a track race's starting gun, at this point all of the reporters turned and ran out of the courtroom to print their articles, now back to the story, "of Defamation, on the second count of Murder in the first degree the defendant is found NOT GUILTY"
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Funnily enough, I'm not seeing The Independent or The Guardian in those results, among others.... I wonder if that's because they're more centrist/left-leaning papers who actually practice journalism rather than xenophobia and hatred? Not that I'm going to be partisan here, but it's interesting how the tabloid idiots who constantly get caught out in blatant lies are almost always right-leaning (Mirror excluded, of course).
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Quite simply, if they don't do it, the competition will. It sucks, but that's life.
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Re: stop it already
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Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
JOURNALISM is a pursuit - it includes hard news reporting, research, analysis, editorial/opinion, audience interaction, entertainment coverage, light news, human interest - lots of stuff
NEWS is, as you say, supposed to be about pure objective fact. It's just one component of journalism.
A NEWSPAPER is a medium. It is just a way of printing stuff. The term carries associations with journalistic values, but a newspaper can in fact be anything from a drug store tabloid to a parody like the Onion to a serious news outlet.
A BLOG is similarly, just a medium. And like newspaper, it can be used for anything from hard reporting to photos of cats. Because the bar to entry is lower, there is greater variety among blogs than among newspapers.
so...
NEWS is a part of JOURNALISM which can be communicated in a NEWSPAPER or in a BLOG. But the simple fact that something is a BLOG or a NEWSPAPER tells you nothing about what kind of JOURNALISM it contains (and how much of that journalism is hard NEWS), or even if it contains any at all.
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So...
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Re: Defamation
/s
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So it's not quite as simple a decision as you make it sound. Being first is important - perhaps moreso than it should be - but it's not the ONLY thing newspapers have to worry about.
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Of course, that relies on the brain power of the average Mail/Sun reader, which only primates tend to envy. At least we're reading something other than how fat/thin/pregnant/not pregnant a "star" of a minor soap is.
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If I had been a reader of any of these "news" sites that printed a bunch of made up fluff and passed it of as fact I wouldn't be anymore.
You can stay competitive by writing the truth and writing it well, investigating and shedding new light on things rather than parroting other stories helps too. Maybe being fast will get you some instant action but a good reputation will get you repeat customersBut its sad that these reporters would rather have the breaking news page views instead of the slightest bit of journalistic integrity.
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Being first might gain you viewers now, but being wrong loses you viewers for a long time. In this case, showing that you lie loses you viewers for ever.
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It's not, that's just what people who make money being somehow the 'official news' would have us believe.
What makes them 'official' and a site like this one 'not' official?
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Re: So...
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Embarrassing. (To be fair, Sky News and the Guardian also claimed she'd been found guilty - just not quite in so much detail ...!)
So I guess the Guardian got it wrong too.
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Fourth Estate
We might also profit!
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Re: Re: stop it already
Oh wait...
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But THIS was a public event, broadcast worldwide by several hundred 'news' organizations. These 'print' (Internet) organizations have no hope of beating live. So, the can get second at best, and at what cost?
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It's just current events mad libs...
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Re: Re: stop it already
By the way, some advice for the next potential hook-up partner: wear protection - may I recommend a shark suit?
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Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
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Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
> blogging is opinion? Nice try though troll.
In which case it wasn't a troll at all, since here we have the news making up facts that didn't happen, hence no actual distinction between the news and blogging.
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Re: stop it already
> when there are thousands protesting in our
> own country.
Because I'd rather see pictures of a cute American girl reunited with her family than a bunch of smelly malcontents laying around a public park, chanting 'Down with capitalism!", while at the same time texting on their iPhones, blogging on their laptops, and slurping down their Snapples.
At the very least my irony meter won't keep red-lining.
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I present, my impression of the Daily mail:
then
"Oh crap..."
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There is absolutely no need to replicate basic facts ad nauseum. First-hand reporting benefits from some variety, sure (I'm not suggesting we send one guy to cover every major story) but you just have to laugh at a press circus, with fifty reporters thrusting their mics upwards as though there were only so many sound waves to go around.
So it's not just that they have to give up trying to be first - they have to give up trying to be everywhere, too.
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If that doesn't work, can I derail the conversation by calling you names and of being a supporter of Mazburglar?
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Which primates, humans?
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Unless, of course, the two errors cancel each other out! I once spent weeks with my weather widget accidentally set to Toronto, Ohio instead of Toronto, Ontario, and found the results to be slightly less accurate after I fixed it...
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Re: Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
I must disagree. This wasn't fact vs opinion. This was fact vs lies.
When they supposedly had reactions and quotes for something that didn't happen, there is no way around that they flat out lied.
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Re: Re: Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
Unless you like the distinction between lies and bullshit that H.G. Frankfurt makes in On Bullshit. I think this is more bullshitting than lying. The paper wasn't aiming specifically to deceieve anyone, it's just that the truth had no particular relevance to their objective. Which is kind of scary for a "news" organization.
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Why first?
If it was a brand new story that no one else knew about, that would be one thing, but "breaking" a ruling in a case like this is worthless. Especially if you add the possibility of screwing it up like this.
Even if they hadn't pushed the "wrong button", there would still be the risk of being called out on the fact that you made pretty much everything up. Is that risk REALLY worth those extra minutes?
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Re: Why first?
Not even minutes. Seconds.
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Ooh shock
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Re: Re: Response to: Ima Fish on Oct 4th, 2011 @ 12:23pm
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Got any evidence for that? I tried politifact, but they don't seem to have a way to look up claims by news organization.
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