Slow down when news breaks
When major news breaks, news outlets try to get the most information to their audience as quickly as possible.
In that rush to get the newest, freshest information, we often rely on people close to the investigation
— unnamed sources from the law enforcement community who may or may not have the correct information.
That information may be an incorrect number of injured people in a crash. It may be an incorrect name of a person. It may be incorrect details about a person of interest in an investigation who simply has information.
In the case of the investigation into right-wing agitator and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s killer, it was every single detail.
Some news outlets repeated politicians’ speculations on the the shooter’s then-unknown motives — which remain unknown as of publication. They repeated right-wing conjecture on the race, gender, and politics of the shooter.
On Thursday Sept. 11, The Wall Street Journal ran with the headline Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology: Sources.
ideology— neither of which are ideologies. The markings turned out to be associated with video games and online memes.
Being transgender is not an ideology. Being transgender means a person’s gender differs from the one assigned at birth. One might say being transgender is being a person.
And antifascism is being against fascism. On its most organized day, it’s an extremely loose, leaderless political movement.
We’ve seen this rush to judgment before. News outlets get ahead of themselves in details and news, putting out misinformation in their need to update every 10 or 15 minutes on their live updates.
Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN are running nonstop live coverage when there’s nothing new to report, instead allowing pundits and politicians to say whatever comes to their minds.
Perhaps it’s time to slow down.
Perhaps it’s time to be more careful.
Perhaps it’s time to change our style.
In a time when those in charge of the federal government, including federal law enforcement agencies have no relationship with facts, we as journalists must exercise extra caution around what information we pass on from them to the audience as gospel truth.
We must be twice as skeptical, more insistent that we verify and check for ourselves that their claims ring true, and demand that sources be on the record.
Stacy Kess is the chief of editorial for Equal Access Public Media. She previously worked as an editor and reporter at papers across the U.S. Find her on Bluesky at @stacykess.
This in an opinion. While this piece contains factual information, it is the author’s point of view.
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