This is pretty amazing and chilling. Maybe you've heard by now that Amanda Knox won her appeal in Italy, where a court yesterday freed her after four years behind bars. Well the Daily Mail published a story on its website, presumably auto-published using a time stamp, declaring quite the opposite. Her appeal lost and she would remain behind bars. Here you go:
Courtesy of the Future Journalism Project, the Mail sets a harsh scene:As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.The weird thing is that pre-web, pre-written news stories were probably a whole lot more common, what with press deadlines and all. I'd say things like this point to a fairly crappy potential future of automated, non-responsive news coverage. Though it's also tempting to blame the web. The race is constantly on to break this or that story, like, by the minute. The rush to click "live" gets kind of brutal. That's also a rush that could just as easily lead to publications short-cutting the facts and reporting part of journalism. Which works just great — for them — until they eventually get caught. Like today.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.