Rumours. Half Truths. Innuendoes.

Caption:Sam Fiest of CNN, speaking at a conference in UWI St. Augustine, March 2009

For journalists there is nothing quite like breaking news. It's the reason why they will cover a hurricane, go where there are bombs in bins, or stay put when others are fleeing in the the other direction. 

Many will tell you that when their newsroom's telephone line buzzes with a lead that something dramatic  is happening that the rest of the country doesn't know, editors are thrown into a frenzy. Their  adrenalin gets going. Reporters get reassigned. Camera teams rush to the scene for the photo opportunity.

These are the moments that remind journalists why they got into the business in the first place. 

But there is something else that journalists like more than  breaking news. They like to be  the first to give the  public a scoop. But its in their eagerness to be the first, where reporters can be deadly wrong, causing all sorts lies, rumours and innuendoes to find traction like a bean seed in a heap of manure.

Take this week for instance.

On  Wednesday, there were reports of a container full of children being found on the Port in Trinidad. At a time when we are plagued day after day with credible  information and stories  that our nation's children are risk, that was reason enough for editors to send their reporters down to the location to investigate. It was not however reason enough for some  radio and broadcast  stations to report  the story as if it was fact.

We later learned it was not, but not before  the rumour was picked up and driven through several internet hungry channels.  

At the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus  yesterday, CNN's producer Sam Feist said when he first heard the radio newscast and the headline news he knew immediately something was not quite right.

" Where was the evidence ?" he asked, "the information just seemed to be speculative and based on hearsay.

Feist said that at CNN there is a formulae for fact checking. Every morsel  of news must have 2 sources. CNN disregards secondhand information if it cannot be verified from a direct source. They certainly don't go to news with rumours.

I am no defender of CNN,  even they don't get it right all the time. In 2000, for instance,  CNN pronounced to the world that Al Gore had won the US Presidential elections. Still, their policy seems a practical and easy one to follow.

Without journalists  democracies don't function and in our new social media world the role of an editor to corroborate, fact check and verify is crucial. 

According to Feist, when it comes to the news, it is great to be first on the scene and the first to deliver the right news to the public. Yet if given a choice,  Feist says he would rather be right than first.