Okay, so.
9/11 happened yesterday. As one would expect, President Obama went to the Pentagon to pay his respects at the crash site there. Expected.
What was not expected, however, is the fact that the Coast Guard decided they wanted to perform a training exercise for how to deal with suspicious boats on the Potomac. According to reports, they ever went so far as to use the term "bang, bang, bang" to pretend that shots had been fired.
Now, CNN, being the dutiful news hounds they are (*sarcasm*), picked up this training exercise on their scanners and decided to interrupt their coverage of the ceremony at the Pentagon to say that there was actually a suspicious boat on the water and the Coast Guard was currently engaged with them.
What is wrong with the above statement? I'll tell ya! [/Craig]
They didn't actually verify anything before they went and reported it. No calls to headquarters, no cross-checking, nothing like that. They just broke in and reported it as honest to God fact.
That, my friends, is terrible journalism. I don't know if they were dying to get the "story" our first, but jezum criminy, man. There are just certain things you do in the industry. Making sure there's actually a fracking story is one of them.
Now, this is not to say that the Coast Guard is not equally retarded. In the first place, why the hell would you run that sort of exercise on 9/11? Second, why would you run it within 10 miles of where the President of the United States is?
To be fair, the Coast Guard said they were going to "review their training practices", whatever that means (you never can tell with the government). CNN, however, has said they will not be issuing a public apology because they had a "duty to report what they believed".
No, dearies, you have a duty to report what is actual FACT and not what is an assumption. CNN is supposed to be one of the few respectable cable news outlets on the air waves, not a sensationalist broadcasting station so hungry for ratings and attention that they would put out a story they didn't bother to verify or get cold hard facts on before shoving it out to the public. Either get it right or don't fsking air it. That's just common journalism sense.
Phew, I feel slightly better now.
