The Faster The Better? When Journalists Sell Long-Shot Guesses As Facts
It’s Monday. Monday, December 19, 2016. The year is almost over. People start making resolutions for 2017 while looking forward to the upcoming Christmas holidays. Something horrible happens. In Berlin, a semi-truck with a trailer crashes into a Christmas market. Twelve people, including one person who was found dead in the truck, died. More than thirty people were severely injured. It’s been a shock. A shock for everyone who was there. A shock for the victims’ families and friends. A shock for the whole nation, if not for the whole world.
The information was spread immediately. Almost every German newspaper provided a live-ticker online. Thousands and thousands of people shared those URLs within seconds on social media websites as e.g. Facebook. Less than two hours after the horrible incident had happened, journalists started publishing the news of the police having arrested a suspect.
The news of the suspect being caught caused a mix of feelings in the nation: On the one hand, people were still shocked about what had happened only a couple of hours earlier. It felt like a nightmare. On the other hand, though, people were relieved that the man who was said to have caused that nightmare was caught. The feeling of relief and safety was strengthened in the next morning when further information on the suspect were officially published:
These details made it seem real. It seemed like the police had found the guilty person who would thus get what he deserves. Who would eventually be punished for all the mischief he had done. However, less than four hours later, any kind of hope and relief disappeared as fast as they had appeared the night before. The police announced that they had caught the wrong man and asked the nation for any kinds of hints or observations.
All of this, from the attack to the release of the suspect, happened within (only!!) seventeen hours. People were shocked, felt relief, were shocked again and did not know what to believe. The incident itself was bad enough. But didn’t the journalists make it even worse by publishing information on the suspect too fast? Apparently, it is their job to inform the nation as fast as possible. However, I think, they should only provide facts, and no assumptions. Even though they wrote that “a suspect” — and thus not necessarily the assassin — had been caught, they still raised people’s hopes by publishing this information.
The question is, then, is it better to be the first one to publish a lie than being the last one to publish a fact? I would say that it generally depends on in how far the information affects the public’s interest. In this concrete case, they could have emphasized the fact that it’s just a suspect to prevent people from raising hopes.
