[Dieselroar88]

It seems like the actual story here is entirely ignored:

Why are a bunch of journalists concerned with how fast they can send out a push notification?? is the world that creates that incentive healthy? What can we do to remove the incentive that led to people having this kind of a discussion on a slack channel while one dude is at a doctors appointment?

This seems like an utter failure of the editorial process in this case. Also the English language (and parentheticals) are hard!

[bombcar]

Entire careers can be made by being first on the spot or first to report - this has been the case as long a journalism has been a thing.

And journalists fight over that - it’s going to be hard to countermand as long as we want “news” and not “olds”.

[ninth_ant]

The news publishing business has a tremendous amount of unhealthy incentives. Rather few good ones, really.

[trompetenaccoun]

On the plus side, we now live in a time where more such internals come to light (at least in Western democracies with free press) and news consumers can make their own informed choices which sources they read and trust. I've personally come to view AP more critical over the past years long before the rocket story. Their quality has gotten worse and they've become slightly political which a news agency should never be, their job is to report what happens in a neutral manner. Not that they're the only ones, it seems to be a general trend that media outlets increasingly feel they need to tell people what to think.

Anyway they definitely messed up big time with that rocket story but if the chats are to be believed it seems like an honest mistake. I agree with you that this isn't how things should be done but in practice there's always been pressure to break stories as fast as possible. It's just the way the industry works and I'd at least partly blame this on the readers as well. People should prioritize quality and truth over speed but that's not how it works. Social media needs its news and it needs it now. If you wait hours or even a day until the situation is clear, at that point the discussions have already moved on.

[SV_BubbleTime]

I saw an AP article recently that was obviously biased. The word choice the omissions on a topic I know a lot about. I did a double take on it.

Turns out the author is an AP journalist, but works for CNN and has a long history of misrepresenting and omitting the facts about this topic.

I agree AP is on the down slope.

[throwawaylinux]

The answer isn't to hope others do the right thing or try to find ways to force them to, it is to learn to deal with them not doing the right thing. People should learn (or be taught) to distrust journalists, "experts", politicians, corporations, police, courts, government agencies, celebrities, and anybody who would try to influence our opinion or exert power over us.

Fortunately many people have recently been inoculated with a very healthy distrust of corporate media, so most people I know were pretty sure this story was hogwash from the beginning.

[95014_refugee]

Teaching people to distrust experts is what got us COVID. Do not recommend.

[throwawaylinux]

I don't think so. That sounds like typical disinformation spread by journalists and authoritarians.

[maxbond]

Well, if it were true, it would be important to get the story out as quickly as they could while doing the necessary diligence, right? Timeliness is important in the news, if NATO were going to war with Russia I'd want to know as soon as possible. The problem is that they didn't do any further diligence.

I think this may be a case of attributing malice to incompetence.

[lowbloodsugar]

Scoop: "a piece of news published by a newspaper or broadcast by a television or radio station in advance of its rivals. The word scoop is of American origin, first documented in 1874. As a verb, meaning to beat someone in reporting first, it is first recorded in 1884."

[shapefrog]

BREAKING NEWS. Thats how news works.

[MichaelCollins]

> What can we do to remove the incentive that led to people having this kind of a discussion on a slack channel while one dude is at a doctors appointment?

Delete the internet, then return to newspapers published once a day. Short of that, it's hopeless. With continuous 24/7 publishing, journalists race to beat each other.

[anshumankmr]

Newspapers have had made very public blunders all the time, and have had extremely bad consequences already. Sure the internet has made it worse, but there would a difference in having comparatively localized consequences versus this, which would be technically WW3.

[MichaelCollins]

> which would be technically WW3.

I think it's important to remember that NATO isn't an unthinking machine that executes mechanistically. Supposing Russia had been responsible for those missiles, I sincerely doubt that would have been the start of WW3. Nobody really wants that outcome, so the humans in the loop would bend over backwards to find a way to prevent that. This might mean pretending to not notice the missile strikes, or asserting they were accidents. I think both Russia and NATO would prefer Russia admitting to an accident and paying out some reparations to a full blown WW3.

WW3 happens if there's really no other choice, as perceived by NATO and/or Russian leadership.

[bboygravity]

And Twitter is still beating them every single time.

[MichaelCollins]

No coincidence that so many journalists are twitter addicts.