Breaking tweets and the LAX tragedy: any lessons learned?

How well did media perform during the breaking news situation around the Los Angeles International Airport shooting on Friday?

Not very, according to this analysis by @SteveJFox.

I lamented the rampant errors around the Boston bombings back in April. And the errors around Sandy Hook, four months before that.

What is it going to take for media to understand that Twitter is like a newswire on steroids? Most people tweet before thinking; journalists cannot afford to.

As many other journalists have said, it’s more important to be right than to be first, if your goal is to inform with credibility. If your motivation is, instead, click-throughs, retweets and shares, then be right be damned and race for the bottom (“be first”).

If it was Watergate that legitimized the anonymous source, what egg-on-the-face event will finally de-legitimize it? Certainly, the Valerie Plame mess doesn’t seem to have slowed the D.C. press corps very much. Likewise the latest shooting tragedy.