I’ve gotten more than a couple of indignant communications from viewers, friends, and whomever over the past few days–all asking about why we were quick to broadcast the news reports from TMZ.com on Thursday about the fate of Michael Jackson. All of the questions share a common thread along the lines of “how dare you report on a rumor?” Most share some dismissal of TMZ as a “gossip website”… or worse.
The last thing in the world I am going to do is defend TMZ as a bastion of journalism, but at the same time the three most important rules in the journalism business are:
- Get the story right
- Get the story first
- Get more on the story
Please note, that the order of those first two rules are often interchangeable for anyone whose deadline falls in the next two minutes. But the point is that while TMZ.com may not be your idea of great journalism, the fact is that they have been right and first on many stories, and for one of the biggest stories of the year (so far) they were both –by a wide margin.
You can criticize their methods, their presentation, their focus, even that odd green water bottle that Host and creator Harvey Levin carries around on their TV show–you can’t criticize them for being wrong.
And OK, they might have been wrong on something in the past (though off hand, I don’t know of instances to cite here), every outfit in the news game has been wrong from time to time. It happens. It is a business driven by human beings, and sometimes human beings make mistakes. Particularly ones under a lot of pressure to perform in a very short time. Any good journalist, corrects the mistake as soon as he/she can, and moves on.
In the aftermath of the Jackson story, there has been the discussions about who reported what, and how quickly they did so. Robin Wauters on the influential website TechCrunch wonders if “the mainstream media still has their eyes wide shut?”
I can only answer that here in Connecticut, I might occasionally squint, when looking at TMZ.com (not sure whether that is the nature of the story or my declining middle-aged vision) But in this case my eyes were staring straight at the computer screen on my desk and I believe I witnessed their coming of age.
Sometimes the facts are the facts, even if we don’t particularly care for where they came from.
Epilogue: As I was finishing this item up, I was interrupted by a phone call, so I saved the file and didn’t come back to it for a bit. In the interim, I noticed that TMZ’s emergence was also noted by crosstown anchor Gerry Brooks of WVIT, on his own blog. Having worked with Gerry more years ago than either of us want to admit, let’s just say that I know he isn’t kidding when thinks that it just might be that hell froze over.
Just so ya know
You weren’t alone
We cited TMZ and went with it
They were of course first and right
Kirk, I wouldn’t say it was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was like one of those “horse” pills you have to gag down.
Old schoolers don’t accept change readily, but hopefully we’re perceptive enough to recognize when change is necessary. I think we got it right this time.