First and Wrong: Misreporting Paterno’s Death

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By John Carvalho, Auburn University journalism professor

On Twitter @johncarvalhoAU

If you follow Twitter and sports, then you are aware of the mess that occurred last night, when the Web site OnwardState.com reported prematurely that Joe Paterno had died. The site reported the news at 8:45 p.m.

The news was quickly picked up and run, particularly by CBSSports.com, which issued an obituary at 8:47 p.m.  The news spread quickly across Twitter — with many expressions of sympathy.  By 8:57 p.m., however, the family issued a statement that Paterno had not died.  (Of course, by now everyone is aware that Paterno did in fact die the following morning of complications from treatment for lung cancer.)

The backlash began. Retractions, deletions, questions. The managing editor of OnwardState.com, which is actually a popular student-run sports and entertainment Web site, resigned.

Indeed, the Web site appears to be "the biggest loser" here and will suffer a deserved loss of reputation. You don't make a mistake like this and shrug your shoulders. Even more curious, to be honest, is the managing editor's seeming amazement that the mistaken announcement was so quickly cited. It comes off as naive.  His exact quote: "I never, in a million years, would have thought that Onward State might be cited by the national media."  Really?

Perhaps a better response would be to give some explanation of how the heck this happened, as a way of assuring it won't happen again. As it stands, the M.E. glosses over that part of it.  (Update: The site’s founder, Davis Shaver, explained what happened in a subsequent post.  The quick version is that the site’s two sources were an email that turned out to be a hoax and a less-than-truthful now-former staff member.  Read and decide for yourself.)

However, CBSSports.com, of all the major sports Web sites, is also coming in for its share of criticism. They also ran with the story without confirmation (the link to the obituary is no longer available) and were forced to issue an apology.

Even more, many claim that CBSSports did not cite the OnwardState report in its early reporting, which is a tacky no-no and, given the outcome, it almost seems calculating and self-serving. CBSSports took the credit when the story was "true," but deflected the criticism to OnwardState when it was false.

For proper citing: Jeff Sonderman of Poynter has done an excellent job tracing this (and apparently sacrificed his Saturday night to do it. Here is his compilation of the tweets and links.

The OS crew's mistake is out there for all to read, as the latest (and one of the saddest) "Dewey Defeats Truman" moments in journalism. Folks like myself, who teach journalism, feel deep empathy toward them, because we have seen other students face the same embarrassment, though perhaps not on the same nationwide scale.

Some would add that, at the very least, Devon Howard deserves credit for owning up to his mistake.  FoxSports columnist Jason Whitlock tweeted, “Can’t express how proud I am of the way you handled your mistake. You have the integrity to be an awesome journalist” (quoted in Romenesko.com).  By contrast, CBSSports.com did not own up to its mistake until almost midnight.

I call it "learning the hard way." The easy way is to take it slow and remember all those arcane principles your journalism prof taught you. But the OnwardState team decided to take a foolhardy risk, and they will bear the consequences as individuals and as a site.

In an emotional situation like this, a journalist should have a governor switch on the scoop meter that says, "Whoa, let's breathe for a second and make sure." Those who waited for confirmation can now at least rest in the assurance that it was not them and they were glad.

I won't heap on them. I will quote my only tweet during the whole situation -- from announcement to retraction to discussion: "The death of a person, well-known or not, should never be treated as a 'scoop.' It's about being right, not being first."

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