Mistaken media reports related to the Rep. Giffords Shooting
The shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others at a public event on Saturday, January 8 resulted in an onslaught of breaking news reporting. That in turn led to a lot of mistakes -- including reports that Rep. Giffords had died. Here's how it unfolded. A report by RegretTheError.com.
- It was after 1 p.m. ET on Saturday, January 8 when reports about the shooting began to spread.
- According to some, NPR was the first major U.S. news organization to declare Rep. Giffords dead:
- A live blog on the Huffington Post noted the NPR report at 2:08 p.m., the website also sent this tweet:
BREAKING: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has been killed, according to NPR huff.to/eSJMEi- Huffington Post followed up with another post at 2:13 p.m. to note that Reuters had also declared Rep. Giffords dead. CNN followed not long after, as did Fox News:
- But it didn't take long for those initial reports to be called into question. News organizations began hedging and correcting the death reports:
- Rachel Sklar of Mediaite was on the story early, and she noted a discrepancy on the New York Times' website:
- NYT story says she was shot and killed. NYT homepage says "still unclear." Screengrab attached. plixi.com/p/68700297
- Then she noted the fix:
- Just re-checked NYT story; now updated to remove the claim that Congresswoman Giffords was killed. FYI. plixi.com/p/68701106
