CBS Sports reported the death of Joe Paterno Saturday, but a family spokesman denied the CBS Sports report.
CBS Sports was the first mainstream media outlet to report Paterno’s death at 8:47 PM ET, and many other outlets — including this site — cited the CBS report. However, CBS did not do its own original reporting for the Paterno story. Writer Adam Jacobi cited the unverified Twitter account of @onwardstate, “an online news organization serving the Penn State and State College community.”
Anyone who reads this site knows of the previous egregious error made here in 2009, when I cited a fake Twitter account that reported the death of the Bengals’ Chris Henry. Since then, I have not cited Twitter as a source without having confirmation from a separate entity, as the site is notoriously unreliable.
On the Joe Paterno story, I made the error of assuming that CBS had done its own reporting, instead of just citing a Twitter account. The original CBS report did not make any mention of Onward State, only offering a hyperlink to the Twitter account. The report has since been revised to attribute the report of Paterno’s death to Onward State. For what it is worth (admittedly not much), I absolutely would not have cited the CBS Sports report if I had known their only source was the Twitter account.
While it is tempting to criticize CBS Sports for making the same idiotic error I made three years ago, the fact is that the mistake here is mine. First, I should have read the CBS report carefully enough to notice that the article contained a hyperlink back to the Twitter account. But more importantly, between this story and the Gabrielle Giffords mistake by NPR last year, I should have reached the obvious conclusion that you should wait until official word before reporting the death of any public figure — even if the report is coming from what would seem like a reputable source.
In the current era, the reputable sources are few, and dwindling. My hope is that the readers will continue to consider this site a reputable source. However, I’m a realist. You can’t make the same mistake twice and keep much of your credibility. There is a temptation here to pin this on CBS’ extremely sloppy reporting, but I would just be making them a scapegoat. The content on my site is my responsibility only.
I will not offer an apology here, as I did in 2009, because I do not believe that is what you are looking for as readers. Simply, you are looking for basic competence. I failed you in that regard today.
