Premature Paterno Death Report Claims Another Victim
Posted by Patrick in Breaking News, News & Media, Sports
CBS Sports has terminated the sports writer who tweeted an erroneous story about the death of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.
The organization was criticized after it reported Paterno’s death on the evening of January 22nd, based on a report published by Penn State’s student-run press site OnwardState.com, without crediting the source of the report.
When Paterno’s family refuted reports of the death, OnwardState.com eventually retracted the story, and CBSSports.com followed suit, and, according to other reports, only then named OnwardState.com as the source of the false report.
In a series of tweets on Friday, Adam Jacobi, the weekend editor at CBSSports.com who posted the story apologized to Paterno’s family for the error, and said he’d had “a great 17 months at CBS Sports.”
He then added these:
The managing editor responsible for the false report at OnwardState.com resigned his position that evening. Paterno died the following morning, less than 12 hours after the initial reports of his death began spreading across the internet.
I suspect the CBS Sports writer would have survived the controversy if the initial story had listed the report as unconfirmed and carried attribution from OnwardState.com. OnwardState.com, in explaining what went wrong, revealed that it had completed two independent confirmations of the story before reporting it, but then suggested that at least one of the reporters who provided that critical confirmation had not acted in an entirely honest manner.
Journalists face so much criticism — most of it, frankly, undeserved — that credibility is important enough to cost a job. I just find it unfortunate that a talented sports writer lost his job over such a mistake.
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