On Boston bombing, media are wrong – again

It's crucial to get information to the American people, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer intoned April 17, but "it's much more important to make sure we're precise and accurate." "I think we need to be, as you know, careful, because initial information can often be wrong," CNN contributor Fran Townsend said the same day. At least the network got those things right.

Unfortunately, their comments came as the beleaguered cable news pioneer was in the midst of making yet another high-profile mistake: reporting that an arrest had been made in the Boston Marathon bombing. CNN had company: the Associated Press, Fox and the Boston Herald, among others, also went with the rapidly discredited story. Once again, four months after the error-riddled reporting on the massacre at Sandy Hill Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., there was a major media malfunction in the coverage of a mega-story.