How Quickly Does the Public 'Need to Know'?

Try this story on for size: prominent government official travels to a nearby town for the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq, and with an offer to provide any assistance needed, she gives family members her business card with her contact information. After all, a bereaved family can use some help in snipping through some of the military's red tape in accessing all of the benefits they're due, right?

The personal touch: classic mid-20th-century-style politicking. No overt political message, just the unsaid emphasis that your public servants stand ready at your time of need. Brownie points for mingling with regular folks and, as the phrase goes, "paying respects." In Pittsburgh, which clings to much of its glory-days customs and beliefs, this sort of behavior from one's elected officials is not uncommon, and usually quite welcome. (I have to admit I felt honored by the officials stopping by, unannounced, to my parents' respective funerals.)

But, boy, can this relic of simple courtesy backfire in the 21st century. And it provides a good case study in how a minor, local story can become enflamed to feed the respective rages of the growing political divide.

After Pennsylvania's Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll attended the funeral of a fallen Marine, she was trashed by the blogosphere and got hate mail from coast to coast, calling for her resignation. It started with a single-sourced story in Saturday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The sister-in-law of the deceased said the state's second-highest official "crashed" the funeral: "I am amazed and disgusted Knoll finds a Marine funeral a prime place to campaign." Ms. Knoll, during the most solemn part of the liturgy, started passing out business cards. Most inflammatory was the hearsay quote attributed to Ms. Knoll: "I want you to know our government is against this war." The only response from the lieutenant governor's office was the sort of anodyne about prayers and grief that one says at a funeral, since no one talked to Ms. Knoll herself. Oh, and the PG also didn't mention that the sister-in-law, the sole source for the story of Ms. Knoll's insensitivities, is a Republican activist.

Yes, the "bias" in the press is for conflict, and the crass politician is a tempting narrative. Too tempting. Despite the obvious lack of balance and basic factchecking, the 24-hour news cycle sent the incomplete story zipping around the media world. The blogosphere hammered it more. All before Lt. Gov. Knoll had a chance to say a word.

Disclosure: while I have had occasion to cover Ms. Knoll in her public duties, and may even have voted for her (she tended to run unopposed in the primary for jobs like state treasurer), I can fairly say I'm not a supporter. While she generally has good political instincts, they're instincts for a different era entirely. Heck, she's a 74-year-old grandmother in a classic blue-collar river town. She probably thinks of Blackberries solely as pie filling, and clearly wasn't thinking of what the blogosphere could do (and I wouldn't bet that she knows what it is).

She finally got a chance to clarify, apologize, and explain in Tuesday's PG story. And she denies the "inflammatory" remark about the war, though what she thinks she remembers saying was a bit hazy. But the story generally tempers what seemed to be the grossest excesses. A tempest in a teapot, heated by the normal heightened passions that come with a funeral, and stirred by a political divide.

Was the incomplete, undersourced story really worth rushing into print on Saturday? Would the national outrage still have been raised if Tuesday's fuller story had been the first? Will this version get the same national play as the original zinger? And how often does this happen?