Verne Strickland / USA DOT COM
CBS Anchor Scolds: ‘We’re Getting the Big Stories Wrong Over and Over Again’
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CBS News anchor Scott Pelley on Friday scolded the news media for what he said has been “a bad few months for journalism.”
“Our house is on fire,” Pelley told an
audience at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. “These have been a bad
few months for journalism. We’re getting the big stories wrong over and
over again.”
“Let me take the first arrow,” he
continued. “During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I
reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son
had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead
wrong. Now I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead
with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong.
So let me just take the first arrow here.”
Pelley was accepting the university’s
Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, named after the former CBS News
president. He said that in an age where more information is available to
more people than ever before, “never has more bad information been
available” either.
He called last month’s Boston terror attack a particularly low point for many in the industry.
“Our nation was attacked by
terrorists,” Pelley said. “I cannot think of a time when the public that
we serve needs accurate, timely information more than in those moments
when our country is under attack.”
CNN was widely maligned for being the first to incorrectly report that authorities had a suspect in custody, as was The New York Post for publishing photos of two men it incorrectly said were being sought by police.
“That fire that started on the Internet
spread to our more established newsrooms,” Pelley said. “In a world
where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor. And that is the
danger we face today.”
Watch Pelley’s full remarks below, starting at the 10:15 mark.
(h/t Weekly Standard)
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