www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press
Today's sad announcement by John Edwards about the return of his wife, Elizabeth Edwards' cancer was not the announcement anyone was hoping for, to be sure. But beyond that, it was not the announcement that some people predicted — and wrote about. On MSNBC, the top headline earlier today was "Ewards To Idle '08 Bid"...which, of course, we now know to be incorrect. The article linked was quickly changed, replaced with a hed of "Wife's illness won't idle Edwards '08 campaign" but, of course, sometimes these changes take a while to cycle through, resulting in the screengrab to the left. Meanwhile, over at Politico, hyperenergetic blogger-newshound Ben Smith has posted a mea culpa on his blog, apologizing to his readers for relying on "a single, confident source close to John Edwards" this morning and reporting that Edwards would be suspending his campaign. Smith apologized contritely to readers for rushing the item up without getting a second source, apologizing to readers for "passing on bad information." As it turned out, those readers included CNN, who ran the headline "Web site: Edwards to suspend White House bid," which still shows up in GoogleNews, but now links to an article with this hed: " Edwards: Wife's cancer returns, campaign goes on."
Is harm done here? Not really; this news is big, and the error has been quickly corrected everywhere. Very few people, if any, will labor long under the misapprehension that Edwards has dropped out. Where this is a problem is in stories that are not so easily corrected, like the bizarre "Topless Kate Moss Offends Mosque" story, which zipped around the globe on the strength of a blog punchline, or the Gwyneth Paltrow story from a few months back that quoted her trashing Americans in favor of classy Brits — which, as it turns out, had been sourced 
back to a single Portuguese paper that had translated her comments from the Spanish she'd made them in. Spanish is not her first language.* The subject matter here isn't as grave or personal as the content of the announcement by John and Elizabeth Edwards, but it does make the point that information, once released, is damned hard to snatch back, and damned hard to chase down. No one is perfect and mistakes definitely happen (ETP-a culpa!) — but today's snafu stands as a reminder that it's better to be right than first.
Scarily, though, that man-on-dead-deer-sex story checked out.
Update: More self-flagellation from Ben. Ben! It's okay! Let's not forget how freaking long it takes other news sources to even issue a correction, let alone admit, update and explain. So, breathe. It's not like you had sex with a dead deer.
Getting It Wrong [Politico]
Web site: Edwards To Suspend White House Bid/Wife's illness won't idle Edwards '08 campaign [CNN]
Ewards To Idle '08 Bid [MSNBC]
*I know this well because I had been asked to discuss this on "Hannity & Colmes" that evening, and made the point that her claim about having been misquoted seemed to make sense, given the triple-translation, single-source factor. Sadly, my fellow debators seemed not to care that the alleged event probably did not happen and continued to discuss the audacity of her America-bashing comments, suggest that she should have her visa status revoked because of her comments, and impugn her choice of baby names (though I did make the point that "Moses" was a good old-fashioned Biblical name).
