Patterico's Pontifications

9/16/2013

Big Media Names Wrong Person As Mass Killer For Umpteenth Time

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:40 pm



Allahpundit has the details, but I think he’s being too nice:

By my count, this makes three times in slightly more than a year where someone in professional media has misidentified a killer publicly. Ben Howe reminded me that Brian Ross didn’t pull his infamous theory about tea partiers after the Aurora shooting out of thin air; he googled for James Holmeses in Colorado and that led him to a tea-party site listing a “Jim Holmes” from Aurora as a member. In the hours after Newtown, CNN reported that it was Ryan Lanza, not his brother Adam, that was the gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary, a mistake that blew up so quickly that Lanza had to pause during his family’s implosion to update his Facebook page to tell the world they had the wrong man. And now, within the past few hours, a double whammy from CBS and NBC:

CBS News and NBC News retracted reports about the identification of the Washington Navy Yard shooter on Monday, just minutes after each network reported that the suspect in question was a Navy chief petty officer named Rollie Chance.

Didn’t the New York Post put a picture of the wrong guys on their front page just after the Boston Marathon bombings? Yes, they did.

So this makes four times Big Media has misidentified a killer publicly in recent months. In fact, it seems far more likely that they will do so than that they won’t.

Thank God for the elevated standards of Big Media!

34 Responses to “Big Media Names Wrong Person As Mass Killer For Umpteenth Time”

  1. You can add Korean pilot Sum Ting Wong to the list.

    kaf (81bcc7) — 9/16/2013 @ 7:53 pm

  2. Layers and layers of fact checkers vetted Ho Lee Fuk.

    Steve57 (6f26ff) — 9/16/2013 @ 8:01 pm

  3. It’s the cops who leak this stuff to the media who should be disciplined. The only way the media got this was from the stolen badge recovered from the shooter’s body. By the cops. Before the cops checked it out to find that it was stolen. What did they get for the “information”? Pizza or donuts delivered to the station?

    And this goes for all the “tips” the MFM gets about Zimmerman’s traffic stops, too.

    nk (875f57) — 9/16/2013 @ 8:11 pm

  4. Face it. The media is worthless.

    navyvet (02dd07) — 9/16/2013 @ 8:22 pm

  5. But………………………………, they are the ones that Senator Asswipe from Kali claims are the “real” journalists, are they not?

    Yoda (ee1de0) — 9/16/2013 @ 8:23 pm

  6. It’s a natural fit, Yoda. She’s worthless, too.

    So they formed a union.

    Steve57 (6f26ff) — 9/16/2013 @ 8:47 pm

  7. The Capital “J” Journalists should leave this stuff to the professionals on the internet.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 9/16/2013 @ 8:51 pm

  8. the MFM lies on a routine basis.

    i generally discount anything they report, except sports scores and advertisements.

    redc1c4 (abd49e) — 9/16/2013 @ 9:22 pm

  9. The people of this country suck.
    They believe the major networks b.s. even when they are wrong.
    People suck.

    mg (31009b) — 9/16/2013 @ 10:17 pm

  10. Dang, mg, and I thought I was feeling mean. Here, this will cheer you up. http://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1mju7o/dictionary_for_decoding_womens_personal_ads/ Or maybe not.

    nk (875f57) — 9/16/2013 @ 10:53 pm

  11. i feel that some of the comments seems out of proportion but in general the original post is a good little piece of work.

    sajid (7f64e3) — 9/17/2013 @ 2:21 am

  12. Thanks for trying, nk.

    mg (31009b) — 9/17/2013 @ 2:43 am

  13. nk, I enjoyed the link to tvtropes. Thanks.

    felipe (70ff7e) — 9/17/2013 @ 5:30 am

  14. Imagine if they had been able to find a Tea Party member in the area.

    Tregonsee (12c9d9) — 9/17/2013 @ 5:55 am

  15. Doug Ross is still googling.

    JD (041c6d) — 9/17/2013 @ 6:51 am

  16. 4. As there are myriad ways in which to be wrong; it cannot be corrected piecemeal. Once she whose drool must be dwabbed for her, divine Di, establishes just who really is a journalist, the professionals should be sterilized and shut away.

    http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/09/16/Gallup-Democrats-Losing-Adavantage-Over-GOP-in-Three-Key-Areas

    With the public’s esteem at record lows, who really cares? What difference could it possibly make?

    No one has a plan to fix our two party system.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 9/17/2013 @ 6:58 am

  17. 15. Via Larwyn, another domino:

    http://frontpagemag.com/2013/magdi/the-delusions-of-caliph-erdogan/

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 9/17/2013 @ 7:05 am

  18. TEA Party isn’t accepting defeat:

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358656/movement-strikes-back-robert-costa

    Note: A disembodied head can live long enough to perceive its lost self. Unseaming the victim is more humane, cleaving the whole into respective lateral halves.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 9/17/2013 @ 12:07 pm

  19. And now we learn he didn’t use an AR-15 after all. (via insty)

    Milhouse (3d0df0) — 9/17/2013 @ 1:05 pm

  20. Was it a Tea Party Patriot or some other crazed radical of the right?

    Rodney King's Spirit (5afc40) — 9/17/2013 @ 3:08 pm

  21. Professionals are corrupt:

    http://minx.cc/?post=343453

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 9/17/2013 @ 3:14 pm

  22. The front page headline in today’s (Tuesday, September 17, 2013) New York Daily News is:

    SAME GUN [the word gun in red letters)

    DIFFERENT

    SLAY (the word slay in red)

    and there’s a small picture with words inside the
    little box

    Wounded are cared for Monday after gunman used AR-15 assault rifle (r.) in rampage at Washington Navy Yard.

    and on the right saide of the front page, sideways, is a black and white picture of an AR-15.

    Also.. underneath the picture is SEE PAGES 4-7.

    Underneath all that are three underlined lines, . Black type, black underlining, but red dots before the, – their called bullts by the way

    o 12 more innocents killed in D.C.

    o Maniac used `Newton’ weapon

    o Lupica: AR-15 made for murder

    Mike Lupica is a New York Daily News columnist, who was originally a sports columnist.

    Across the top of pages 4 and 5. yellow on black, is:

    SAME GUN, DIFFERENT SLAY / TOOL FOR MURDER AND MADNESS

    Big white on black headline for column, with letters underlined in white, on page 5:

    AR-15 is `sport rifle’ for hunting humans.

    Sammy Finkelman (04483b) — 9/17/2013 @ 3:28 pm

  23. Well, Sammy, it is The Daily News and it is New York. What did you expect?

    nk (875f57) — 9/17/2013 @ 3:36 pm

  24. There are an estimated 5 million AR 15 rifles in civilian hands.

    Must be a pretty lousy “human hunting” season, ’cause I ain’t seen any humans atop Jeeps locally.

    Note: A lot of different companies now make AR 15 type rifles. I can’t keep track of them all. There are huge numbers of companies that just make one or more parts or parts assemblies used in the design and other companies that just assemble rifles from those parts. A lot of them are sold for target shooting, self defense purposes (don’t listen to Joe “Dementia Patient” Biden) and a lot are sold for hunting. So when I refer to AR 15, I’m not just referring to the original Colt AR 15 Sporter – the first semi-auto model marketed to civilians – but to all the myriad of models sold by all those different companies.

    SPQR (768505) — 9/17/2013 @ 3:50 pm

  25. Only Newsday or the Amsterdam Times would be worse, possibly then even the Times.

    narciso (3fec35) — 9/17/2013 @ 3:55 pm

  26. Fox announces primetime lineup (in order).

    Greta, Bill, Megyn, Sean.

    EPWJ hardest hit.

    elissa (bf3931) — 9/17/2013 @ 3:58 pm

  27. elissa – I thought Sean was leaving to become CEO of EPWJ’s artisan cheese investment.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 9/17/2013 @ 3:59 pm

  28. If I were Eric I’d be really irritated at my Fox “insider” with the “insider information”. Or maybe there never was one?

    elissa (bf3931) — 9/17/2013 @ 4:02 pm

  29. Diane Feinstein should create a scale on how journalistic you are based on your agreeing with prog policy, and the amount of shielding you deserve. Chuck Todd of NBC gets 5 out of 5 Feinsteins for being an official democratic administration stenographer. Patterico gets a 1 out of 5 for stating zippy is a good guy.

    gungrabbiest (f7d5ba) — 9/17/2013 @ 4:02 pm

  30. Please tell us again, O Conservative Optimist, how we’re to bend the the curve in t’other direction.

    http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/09/the-new-cbo-debt-study-is-way-worse-than-the-media-is-telling-you/

    I’ve one word of warning, GOP loyalist:

    ‘You’re naked and exposed and it’s a cold rain that’s beginning to fall’.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 9/18/2013 @ 7:02 am

  31. The last place you should go for news during a major event is the news.

    CrustyB (69f730) — 9/18/2013 @ 8:33 am

  32. History of some of the errors.

    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/16/errors_mar_navy_yard_shooting_reports_119951.html

    There’s also a Washington Post story tghat was reprinted in Hamodia:

    http://hamodia.com/2013/09/17/news-outlets-stumble-during-navy-yard-coverage/

    The erroneous reports weren’t concocted. In most cases, they came directly from police sources, and quickly bubbled up
    through the modern media ecosystem, hopping from law enforcement scanners to Twitter to traditional media reports, all within minutes.

    I suppose unoffivial police sources, but the official police sources weren’t so much better.

    Sammy Finkelman (628029) — 9/18/2013 @ 10:54 am

  33. This is the Washington Post story itself, which contains alittle bit more:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/news-outlets-often-stumble-in-quest-for-speed-and-accuracy/2013/09/16/e5444820-1f19-11e3-8459-657e0c72fec8_story.html

    Sammy Finkelman (628029) — 9/18/2013 @ 10:56 am

  34. “Established leadership of the GOP fighting a losing battle against unhinged insanity”.

    Ace vs. the meme:

    Well I know what agenda will make their lives easier– obviously, an agenda that is just slightly to the right of the Democrats’ leftist agenda would force the Democrats into the smallest space and open up a lot of space for Republicans.

    In game theory, yes, that strategy will probably yield the most successes. I am not ignorant of that.

    But what is the point then? We’re not just rooting for a party like we root for a football team. (Although it does feel that way sometimes.)

    We’re pushing for a party to undertake specific efforts. Without those efforts, “winning” is purely a technical exercise.

    I know all you sane, reasonable Republicans are out there, as much as you ever are, let’s see some spirit, some fight, some umbrage.

    Wimps.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 9/19/2013 @ 11:19 am


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