CNN and Fox get it wrong on health-care ruling
Posted at 10:46 AM ET, 06/28/2012
By Erik Wemple, WashPost
By Erik Wemple, WashPost
Here is the banner stripped right now at the very top of CNN.com:
Correction: The Supreme Court backs all parts of President Obama’s signature health care law.
Yes, the network that is used to being first among cable news networks to big stories originally reported something far different — that the court had invalidated the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Actually, here’s the headline that had been stripped across its top:
The Supreme Court has struck down the individual mandate for health care.
Someone needs to tell CNN: There is no such thing as fashioning a scoop over something that’s released to the public. Here I cite New York University professor Jay Rosen, who repeatedly chants about how cheap it is when news outlets brand as “exclusives” bits of information that everyone will know in a short time anyhow. This afternoon, one day from now, one week from now: No one will notice, care or otherwise take heed that your outlet was the first to report on a Supreme Court decision. There’s not an outlet that’ll own that news. But much heed will be taken of a quick and mistaken interpretation of such a decision.
CNN is a huge outlet that’s due to rake in profits of $600 million this year. It has oodles of reporters and producers and news executives, all with grand credentials and deep history in the news business. Yet it could have learned a lesson from cute little SCOTUSblog.com, which wrote on its liveblog: “It’s very complicated, so we’re still figuring it out.”
Brilliance.
(Update: 11:30 a.m.) Fox News did pretty much the same thing, presenting broadcast viewers this chyron:
Correction: The Supreme Court backs all parts of President Obama’s signature health care law.
Yes, the network that is used to being first among cable news networks to big stories originally reported something far different — that the court had invalidated the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Actually, here’s the headline that had been stripped across its top:
The Supreme Court has struck down the individual mandate for health care.
Someone needs to tell CNN: There is no such thing as fashioning a scoop over something that’s released to the public. Here I cite New York University professor Jay Rosen, who repeatedly chants about how cheap it is when news outlets brand as “exclusives” bits of information that everyone will know in a short time anyhow. This afternoon, one day from now, one week from now: No one will notice, care or otherwise take heed that your outlet was the first to report on a Supreme Court decision. There’s not an outlet that’ll own that news. But much heed will be taken of a quick and mistaken interpretation of such a decision.
CNN is a huge outlet that’s due to rake in profits of $600 million this year. It has oodles of reporters and producers and news executives, all with grand credentials and deep history in the news business. Yet it could have learned a lesson from cute little SCOTUSblog.com, which wrote on its liveblog: “It’s very complicated, so we’re still figuring it out.”
Brilliance.
(Update: 11:30 a.m.) Fox News did pretty much the same thing, presenting broadcast viewers this chyron:
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