Media learned nothing after falsely reporting Reagan assassination attempt

At 2:27 pm on March 30, 1981, Secret Service agents accompanied President Reagan and White House staff to deliver a speech in front of the Chief Information Officer of the American Federation of Labor at the Washington Hilton Hotel. About 100 people waited at a side entrance of the hotel to see the president, who walked to his limousine, which was parked 12 feet away on T Street NW. Reagan, wearing a blue suit, smiled and waved, pausing for a moment while *** Sam Donaldson of the Press Department called his name from a roped-off press area. In the same area, John W. Hinckley fired six shots. Jerry Parr, head of the Presidential Secret Service, pushed a surprised Reagan into the limousine.

, and then, 18 years after the two attempted deaths of Gerald Ford and the shooting death of John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, targeting the current The assassination attempt on the president was over. But how the news spread, sowing confusing misinformation at home and abroad, provided a cautionary tale for the media, a story it still struggles with today.

Fifteen minutes after Hinckley was fired, *** news anchor Frank Reynolds interrupted the soap opera "One Life to Live" with breaking news.

"The president "was not hit," Reynolds stressed. By 3 p.m., NBC and CBS were joining ABC in airing footage of the shooting, as was CNN, which had been founded less than a year earlier. Lacking insight into the images on the screen, the anchor first watched the video on the screen as the limousine transported Reagan to George Washington University Hospital, where news authorities and the public watched as the man fell to the ground. Shouting was heard. They saw detectives and police officers, guns drawn, grabbing the gunman, holding the fallen man and rushing him into a police car. Reynolds recounted the news incident as he struggled to figure out what was going on. :

"They're catching the attacker, or so it seems. "

"There are 1, 2, and 3 people on the ground. "

"Yes, [the shooter] appears to be blond.

On CNN, Shaw had a one-on-one phone conversation with White House reporter Bob Berkowitz, who was near the hotel scene at the time. Between long pauses and unforgivable glances at the camera, Shaw told Berkowitz what he knew.

"I just heard in my (opposite) ear that Jim Brady was still on the ground," Shaw told Berkowitz. He hung up the phone and looked at the camera. "That's how chaotic it is," he said.

"We cannot say enough times that the President of the United States is OK," Shaw repeated, citing a White House statement as producers were seen on camera shoving sheet after sheet of paper into his office. on the table.

"Now I'm told," Shaw said, touching behind his left ear as the president was being pushed into the car.

Shortly before 3:17 p.m., Tennessee Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., the Senate majority leader, interrupted a budget debate. Baker said, "Please allow me to take this opportunity to tell the Senate , I was told that the President of the United States was the target of a shot fired at him minutes before. He was not hit. "

In the White House, as most senior officials and people at home knew: the contents of the videotape, fixed on a steady loop of slow motion and still frames. "I just saw you on TV. "It sounded serious," Secretary of State Alexander Haig said at a subsequent press conference. "At the hospital, reporters gathered in a makeshift press conference room to submit copies over pay phones.

The hosts relayed some correct facts, based on what their team could determine and infer from witnesses: Press Secretary James Brady was the one lying face down on the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to the head; the second was wounded The man in question was Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy; the third wounded man was Officer Tom Delahanty; the gunman was a troubled Coloradan named John W. Hinckley; the president had Wall Wall, U.S. Ground The invasion of troops had put pressure on his ***. But as Americans wait to hear what happened on the afternoon of March 30, 1981, the only objective truth they see in these moments of uncertainty and rumor is footage of President Reagan standing stoically, cultural sociologist Elizabeth Elizabeth Butler Breese wrote in an article in Crisis of News Rethinking that in 1981 the network blamed " New 'instant' reporting" expectations for spreading misinformation. Thirty-five years ago, the networks allowed advances in satellite technology and the first continuous cable news channel (CNN) to push them toward half-baked coverage. Beess’ coverage of the 2011 assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Jeeves sent headlines after NPR incorrectly reported news of her death on the air and on Twitter To 2 million followers at the time. Noted NPR's Twitter, CNN, CNN and Fox News reported on the story.

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings two years later, erroneous reporting led to numerous reports including CNN, the Associated Press, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC and the Los Angeles Times. Sources "broadcast" untrue things about investigative findings and persons of interest. Not wanting to distract the public, the FBI issued a statement admonishing the media to "exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting." After reporting on the 2013 mass shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., where similar inaccurate reports were commonplace, the public *** radio program "On the Press" published a "Consumer's Handbook for Breaking News" and has since Became a guide to how to report in the age of Twitter.

Today's reporters disseminate information through far more portals than there were in 1981 through anchors and broadcasts. Now, as then, in the aftermath of a tragedy, viewers (or Facebook and Twitter users) search for a logical thread in the "chaos of the moment," in Dan Rather's words. So much so that the fastest "breaking" headlines often form public opinion. As the people across the country saw 35 years ago, sometimes the truth is as dramatic as the rumors