Two tales of a stabbing

[yendi]

Here's an eyewitness account of the Comic-Con Stabbing.

And here's CNN's reporting.

Possible explanations for the differences:

1. Bad reporting.

2. Lying bloggers.

3. The many worlds theory.

Of course, it can't be the first one. As Glenn Greenwald notes today, the media are generally the ones who get things right, while the bloggers are a bunch of liars.

ETA: Yes, CNN has added a lot of details and seems to have the story more straight now.

Comments

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

Iiiiiinteresting. Also, Glenn Greenwald link is broken.

[yendi]

Thanks! Fixed it.

[elizabear.livejournal.com]

I used to go to Comic-Con, back in 1988-92. I doubt I'd even recognize the event today.

I've had personal experience with news reporting being incorrect; I'd trust the bloggers more in this case.

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

Was there in 1992, as well—back when it was all about comics instead of stupid blockbuster movies.

[nounsandverbs]

I'm not seeing much in the CNN report that doesn't jive with the eyewitness account. The basics of the story are the same in both accounts: man stabbed with pen near his eye by another man. The CNN report gives the cops' description of what the argument was; the eyewitness was too far away to have seen that. The eyewitness wants to make it clear that the audience wasn't just standing around while this incident happened. Fair enough, but CNN doesn't say they were. It just says it took place "while fans were waiting for a panel" -- in other words, between panels, like the eyewitness said. CNN doesn't mention that audience members subdued the attacker, which arguably they should have mentioned. But it's a brief story -- it doesn't mention who subdued the attacker at all. CNN wouldn't devote a lot of time to this because it's a purely local issue and CNN is a national network. There probably weren't any CNN staffers at the event.

The only eyewitness in the CNN story is one who reached out to CNN via their iReport feature. I'd say that's lazy on CNN's part. Newsgathering is supposed to be an active process -- stuff like the iReport is catch-as-catch-can. (And CNN's eyewitness sounds like a bonehead to me.)

For stories of this nature, local affiliates are usually where the action is, journalistically speaking. The CBS affiliate in San Diego agrees with the eyewitness account: man stabbed with pen, crowd helped subdue attacker. They also appear to have gone live with the story, which makes sense. That's what I'd do, if it happened in New York.

[yendi]

Yeah, the CNN account was fleshed out a lot and seems more on the ball now. And very true about the local reports.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

CNN, we report the news first, and sometimes we go back and try to get it right too...

[kizlj.livejournal.com]

fwiw, there's a big push at CNN to use iReport anytime possible, so I'm unsurprised to see it heavily influencing an article. I'm pretty sure it was the iReport that got this on the network's radar in the first place (the iReport team sent out a bunch of alerts about it). And there's also a growing trend toward publish early, flesh out later.

[yendi]

I would have figured that they'd have tried to cut back after SNL skewered them over it. :-)

[azurelunatic]

Hmm, has the CNN story changed materially since you linked it? Because as of right now, it seems vastly less detailed than the eyewitness account, but I do not notice obvious deep discrepancies.

[yendi]

Yeah, they've fleshed out the story and fixed a lot, it seems.

[azurelunatic]

CNN is also the news outlet that rather memorably said that they were "efforting" to find out whether or not Michael Jackson was dead. teshiron is still traumatized by that.

[yendi]

"Efforting?" Oy.

[nounsandverbs]

Yeah, that's a word used internally in newsrooms. Not usually for public consumption. I'm guessing when Michael Jackson was first reported dead, everyone in that newsroom was too crazed to edit carefully.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Verbing weirds language! (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://bookishmonkey.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/verbing-weirds-language1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D113551&usg=__npk-ygZO9eWL_9nVq8dE9ukeyjY=&h=273&w=800&sz=36&hl=en&start=0&tbnid=MIaEOvC8cXw0fM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=228&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dverbing%2Bweirds%2Blanguage%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1157%26bih%3D649%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=164&ei=BOJMTOTjB8uKnQfuwNHYCw&page=1&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0)

[kizlj.livejournal.com]

haha. almost certainly. CNN's default jargon when trying to chase down a news tidbit is that the desk is "efforting confirmation"; I'm unsurprised it crept into a published breaking-news piece.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Eyewitness: "The attacker had been walking past the row and said something (I don’t know what was said) and when the other man asked “What?” that’s when the man walking stopped and stabbed him in the eye."

CNN: "A Comic-Con attendee stabbed another near the eye with a pen Saturday after they got into an argument over whether one was sitting too close to the other, police said..."The room was very crowded and the males argued over one male sitting too close to the other," Stafford said."

[lordrexfear.livejournal.com]

From CNN:
He had on a blue "Harry Potter" T-shirt

That's BLUE!!?!?

http://tweetreel.com/?epjdb

If that's blue...

seriously, the haphazard journalism is annoying.

You aren't newsone.blogspot.com, you're CNN!

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

It does actually look blue in the photo on the CNN link. I'm not going to pretend to know the technical reason.