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The value of experienced journalists exposed! 
Today I bring you an mea culpa by Craig Silverman in Poynter who has clarified and illuminated the difference between professional journalists and the ubiquitous social media scribblers who either work for free or rely on paid advertisers to fund their blogs! As usual, my response is below and there is room for your comment below that.

It started with confusion at the scene of the crime. A source told CNN the killer was named Ryan Lanza.
Soon several news organizations published images from a facebook profile belonging to a man with that name. Some of them declared he was the killer. He wasn’t. After we learned the caliber of the weapon used in the shooting, people began circulating images of large assault weapons, saying this was the gun used. Those early weapons were off the mark as well. As has been noted by many, the errors continued. Adam Lanza’s mother didn’t work at the school, the students who died were in first grade, not kindergarten.

“For some, this proves that social media is not an appropriate tool for journalism, particularly real-time news reporting,” writes Matthew Ingram at GigaOm. ”But I think it shows something very different: I think this is just the way the news works now, and we had better get used to it.” I’d suggest two things journalists can do during these situations to help ensure they’re playing a constructive role, rather than amplifying false information and adding to speculation. One thing that struck me on Friday was the news organizations who didn’t spread the Facebook profile, who held back and showed restraint on that and other points. Sasha Koren

Verify, period. MT @bydanielvictor: Ryan Lanza slimed by @BuzzFeed posted new FB statuses to say it wasn't him: bit.ly/VFLfwR

When information is abundant, rumours are easy to stoke and disseminate. When others have already put speculative information out there, showing restraint may seem difficult. But at that moment it can be a competitive differentiator. Restraint is a value that’s rarely celebrated, rarely highlighted. It mattered a lot on Friday, and would have helped spare a lot of injurious speculation if it had been practiced by more journalists and news organizations. During real-time news events, quality sources of information are sometimes characterized by what they aren’t reporting. They are the ones holding back while others rush ahead. The ones sticking to a verification process and not being swayed by speculation or a desire for traffic and attention.

The value of restraint is difficult to quantify. You don’t get more traffic for what you don’t report. It therefore seems like a losing proposition. As is often said, people remember who got it wrong, not who got it right. Or who held back. Not getting it wrong is one obvious value of restraint, but, again, that doesn’t help you be part of the conversation. During events such as the shooting in Newtown, one way to realize the value of restraint is to talk about what you aren’t reporting. Carefully acknowledge the speculation (e.g., “A Facebook profile is circulating, but we are not confident it is the shooter and that’s why we are not sharing it”).

This seems counter-intuitive to the value of restraint, but today’s information environment requires that restraint itself be shared, be publicized. It must become part of the process of real-time journalism, and part of the conversation. That way people know who is and isn’t reporting a given piece of information, and why. It will help bring a measure of order and explanation by reminding people that information is not universally verified. Rather than remaining silent about what they refuse to report, or cannot verify, news organizations should be vocal about where they stand.

Andy Carvin, the most experienced practitioner of real-time process journalism, was in full force on Friday, using his Twitter network as an extended newsroom to help him surface, debunk and verify claims and information. At one point I saw Carvin tweet out a meesage to help explain his level of restraint: Andy Carvin

For those of you who think I'm posting everything I'm finding, I'm actually sitting on about 75% of what I know b/c contradictions abound.

I’d encourage Carvin and others pushing the boundaries of real-time journalism to regularly offer that kind of reminder and context about how they work. Explaining why you aren’t reporting information is one way to do that. One key thing for journalists to realize is that this transparency is new to the public, too. Ingram writes:

In the past, this chaotic process of journalistic sausage-making was kept mostly hidden from TV viewers and newspaper readers. Inside the newsrooms at these outlets, reporters and editors were frantically trying to collect information from wire services and other sources, verifying it and checking it as best they could, and then producing a report at some later point.

Explaining how we work can smooth the transition for the public.
On Friday, I saw at least a few of Carvn’s followers either ask him for this kind of background, or react in ways that suggested they don’t understand how he works. (Some people understood it and are still troubled by it.) I agree with Wendy Kloiber: an online primer would be a great way to help people understand this new form of journalism. I don’t doubt Carvin’s book will be great, but it’s not the right format for providing background and context during a breaking news event. Maybe practitioners could write their own brief primers and link to  them from their Twitter profiles and blogs. Carvin himself acknowledged that each new breaking news event requires him to educate new people on how he works. Why not write a quickie guide, make it public, and link frequently? 
Rediscovering how whenever I have a spike in Twitter followers, I have a spike in complaints from ppl not familiar with my use of Twitter.

A backgrounder would also provide a useful retort when people encounter Carvin’s work and wonder what he's doing. If news is forever changed and the flurry of confusion and contradictions we saw on Friday, and during Hurricane Sandy, are the new norm, then it’s up to journalists to think about what this means for their workflow and approach. I’d like to see restraint practiced and publicized, and to see more journalists speak up about why a given piece of information hasn’t met their standards. It also means we have to provide the kind of background and context that can help the public understand the new rules and practices that drive our work. my response.....

I found the distinction between news reporting and speculation by social media scribes particularly disturbing in the early hours of the grade one tragedy, as it was just a couple of weeks ago that the Toronto Sun dismissed long-time and respected writer Lorrie Goldstein. Purported to be a cost-cutting measure, when you start cutting out the meat before you've trimmed the fat, clearly, there are other issues! There are few other professions as subjective as news gathering but there is always a danger when attempting to turn a science into an art form! Without sounding maudlin, it's no secret that news was turned into a commercial venture long before any of us where around but folks can still be swayed by breaking news so it is important that we get it right...before we hit the send button!

Having said that, mistakes and all, the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday that took the lives of 20 schoolchildren, plus eight adults, helped power CNN to a rare ratings victory that day, according to Don Irvine, Chairman of Accuracy in Media. CNN, which has been badly lagging both Fox News and MSNBC, saw viewers in the key 25-54 demographic turned their attention to the CNN network as the story unfolded, once again underscoring the public’s preference to turn to CNN when there is a major, breaking news story. Didn't this start with on the scene coverage of the Baghdad bombing back in January 1991, with a big assist during the Simpson trial?
The victory for CNN was complete, with the network winning every hour in the demo from 5 p.m. through midnight, and doing so convincingly, with Anderson Cooper beating ratings champ The O”Reilly Factor by 212,000 viewers in the 8 p.m. hour and swamping Greta Van Susteren in the 10 p.m. hour by 411,000.

While CNN beat Fox News by a fairly substantial margin, it completely obliterated MSNBC by 600,000-700,000 viewers in primetime, giving the liberal network its lowest ratings in more than a year.
But CNN shouldn’t get too excited by this ratings spike. Undoubtedly it will slip back to third place as the stories related to the tragedy start to fade, once again exposing the weak lineup that continues to plague the network.
Posted by Brian Weller at 07:21