The Media Were Wrong--Again--With the Connecticut Murders

After the rush to report the health care ruling caused at least two media outlets to report it wrong , has the media learned anything?

Sure, it’s a whole different scenario. The police name the suspected killer in a murder of schoolchildren, so the outlets feel the need to rush into it headlong. But still.

Among other examples, Gawker posted a story with the headline “Is This Ryan Lanza, the Connecticut School Shooter?” 

But is wasn’t.

Ryan Lanza is the brother of Adam–the current suspect. The police had it wrong, and the media went with it.

Not only the media, though.

Pando Daily debates what could have been done on Facebook, specifically, including possibly sending an alert to every user named Ryan Lanza saying “Hey you might encounter a lot of hate thrown your way today, so you may want to update your profile page or privacy settings accordingly”? Or for those with private accounts, “Here’s how you can post a public message if you’d like to say something.”

Back to the press; the local Newton Bee covered the murders more levelheadedly. 

And there is an overall trend of outlets minimizing use of the killer’s name in articles, at least in the front page. At least several news outlets don’t use the names of suspects at all. 

But in another controversial set of actions, some reporters took to Twitter to hound anyone tweeting about a connection to the killings–such as potentially having a a friend’s daughter killed.

It gets worse–striking at someone who lost their cousin.

The Daily Caller, which wrote a story called “ABC, NY Times reporters go full-on vulture tweeting friends, family of Connecticut massacre targets,” tried to contact Shubailat by email but she didn’t respond. They reached her by phone but she hung up. They apparantly didn’t try to contact the other reporter seen above.

The article‘s ending is good, so we’ll finish with that:

“Late Friday night, @artayd2 retweeted a message from a friend who asked, ‘Why do shooters get famous? Maybe because reporters are so desperate for ratings, they’ll interview freshly-traumatized children.’”

Read a related story:

Was the Newtown Killer A Secret Front For Something More Sinister?