BY SAM CAPUANO
sam@theballstonjournal.com
Last Saturday night as I was watching a basketball game on ESPN, a Facebook status update got my attention. It stated long time Penn State football coach Joe Paterno had died of lung cancer. Now, I know one should not believe everything they see on the Internet, but this was from the Facebook page of a prominent local daily newspaper, so I figured it was the real McCoy.
Now, anyone who watches ESPN regularly knows they have a continuous news crawl on the bottom of their screen. The crawl noted Paterno’s condition was “serious”, and I was confused how the “World Wide Leader in Sports” could not be reporting the death of one of the Top 10 coaches of all time. Turns out the reason was simple: the reports of JoePa’s death were greatly exaggerated.
It took about an hour or so, but the newspaper’s posting was pulled, replaced with a statement saying Paterno’s family was saying the old coach was still alive. The next morning, the newspaper, clearly horrified, had a mia culpa explanation as to how they erred. Later on that next day, when Paterno did indeed pass away, one wonders if the newspaper heaved a sigh of relief.
In the news business, a premium is placed on getting the scoop on the competition. Here’s hoping the premium placed on getting the story accurate is just strong.
In 1981, I sat riveted to the television watching the coverage in the aftermath of the assassination attempt of President Ronald Reagan. I remember being saddened when ABC news reported Reagan Press Secretary James Brady had died of wounds received in the attempt. I remember even more vividly how shocked I was a short time later when Frank Reynolds retracted the death report. He was both relieved his friend was still alive, and livid about the mistake, saying with a sneer on the air to his reporters, “Let’s nail it down!”
The most famous example of not nailing it down came courtesy of The Chicago Tribune. In the presidential election of 1948, New York Governor Thomas Dewey was widely predicted to beat incumbent Harry Truman. The Tribune was so sure they printed thousands of copies with the famous headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” And, as anyone who has been forced to memorize the names of all U.S. Presidents knows, Thomas Dewey did not win the election. The electoral count wasn’t even close. And the Tribune had perhaps the most egg on their face any newspaper ever faced.
A few years ago, I was covering my first election for the Journal. It was the hotly contested Republican primary contest for Milton Supervisor, and was a three-way race between incumbent Frank Thompson, Republican-endorsed candidate John Frolish, and John Olenik.
Unlike the aforementioned presidential election, there was no sure thing here, and interest was high. I made a pest of myself and hovered over the vote counters as they tallied things up. Now, as elections are not decided until Tuesday nights after 9 p.m., we have a deadline dilemma for our print edition, as we go to press the next day. Election nights tend to be long. At any rate, based on what I saw, I reported Thompson had received 93 more votes than second place finisher Frolish. I wrote my story in the wee small hours of the morning, emailed it to editor Charles Hogan, and went to sleep.
The next morning I was reading election results in the dailies, and froze when I saw the Daily Gazette, in their print edition, was reporting Frolish as the victor. I then checked their on-line version and it was the same. In a panic I called Charles, yelling, “I pulled a ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’! I got the story wrong!”
Fortunately, Charles, being the experienced newsman he was, told me I had nothing to worry about, as I was reporting what I saw. I figured he was just humoring me, and wondered which other newspaper might hire me after I got canned. But, sure enough, the Gazette retracted their on-line account of the election results, as Thompson had indeed prevailed. Not so coincidentally, I remain employed by this newspaper to this very day.
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