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The Fog of Breaking NewsWhy you should take reports from the scene of a massacre with a grain of salt.

By Jack ShaferPosted Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008, at 5:47 PM ET

Indian policemen at the Chattrapati Shivaji Railway terminus. Click image to expand.Fast-breaking news is usually served broken.

I offer that insight as an observation, not a criticism. As one who has scribbled conflicting eyewitness accounts from a fast-moving story in my reporter's notebook, I have nothing but gratitude and sympathy for the boots on the ground who produce the hot dispatches readers crave—even if many of those hot dispatches turn out to be crap.

The latest example of crap masquerading as authoritative news comes to us from the pens and microphones of the reporters covering the Mumbai massacre: Reading the first wave of Mumbai stories against the second reveals how rough the first rough draft of history can be. Respected, major media outlets produced contradictory accounts of the carnage and its aftermath.

It would be easy to blame the opening inaccuracies on the discombobulating nature of the terrorist assault, or to accuse a naïve Indian press of leading the Western press astray, or to damn Indian government officials for steering reporters wrong. But it ain't so. Breaking news—especially complex breaking news—has always defied the best reporters' attempts to get the story both first and right.

For instance, immediately following the 9/11 attacks, all sorts of bunk about the identities of hijackers, explosives on the George Washington Bridge, and a car bombing at the State Department turned up in the Boston Globe, on CNN, on the New York Times Web site, and on CBS. The press foisted spacer onto their clientele when reporting the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. As Slate contributor David Greenberg catalogs in his book Nixon's Shadow, the press made serious errors in Watergate coverage that were never corrected.

Should reporters publish only when they've nailed the story six ways to Sunday? Not to endorse journalistic malpractice, but as long as they don't intend to deceive and believe what they publish, I'd rather read their imperfect reports from the scene of breaking news than wait for a book on the subject. "Journalism in lieu of dissertation," to use Edgar Allan Poe's phrase, is the light artillery we can use now.

That said, the press could do a better job of cleaning up after the fact by acknowledging that their frantic chasing of the story also resulted in the publication of some … crap. (As long as we're on the subject of how the press should clean up behind itself, see former New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent's 2004 column about "rowbacks.")

At the very least, newspapers and networks could routinely warn readers of the provisional nature of their hot, breaking reports and advise all to keep pinches of salt handy. Reporter Rhys Blakely of the Times of London did just that in his Dec. 2 Mumbai story, indicating why so many contradictory statements were coming out of the interrogations of captured terrorist Azam Amir Kasab. Blakely writes:

It is thought that as many as 15 Indian officials are sitting in on the militant's interrogation, and many are leaking their interpretations of his responses to the media.

So, with that throat-clearing completed, here's an assortment of misinformation, quarreling facts, and bunk published by the world press about the Mumbai rampage. (Note: the spelling of the Kasab's name varies from publication to publication.)

What nationality were the killers?

Two British-born Pakistanis were among eight gunmen seized by Indian commandos who stormed buildings to free hostages, Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Mumbai, reportedly said.
—Daily Telegraph, Nov. 28, 2008

A top Indian official, Maharashtra state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, said there was "no authentic information" to suggest that any British citizens were involved.
—Daily Mail, Dec. 1, 2008

Indian authorities said today that all 10 of the terrorists who attacked the city of Mumbai last Wednesday were from Pakistan.
—ABCNews.com, Dec. 1, 2008

The [Anti-Terror Squad] officer also disputed Indian press assertions that the attackers were Pakistani, saying they were of many nationalities.
—New York Times, Dec. 1, 2008

How did they plan their assault?

After the [terrorists'] training was over, they were sent to Mumbai for a "short internship," [Azam Amir] Kasab is believed to have told the cops. This was the period when the accused did the [reconnaissance] of the city and even went to the five star hotels (Taj and Oberoi), the sources said.
—Times of India, Dec. 1, 2008

Investigators are probing whether the information came by way of local help, or whether a separate team of militants carried out a reconnaissance mission from abroad to the financial center on India's west coast to scope out targets and prepare the attacks.
—Wall Street Journal, Dec. 2, 2008

How well did the terrorists know the Taj Mahal hotel layout?

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Elite Indian commandos spoke of fierce battles through the maze of corridors and 565 rooms of the 105-year-old Taj Mahal hotel in which the terrorists had a better knowledge of the building's layout than security forces.
—Financial Times, Nov. 28, 2008

"I do not think they knew the hotel inside out," [said City Police Commissioner Hassan Gafoor].
—Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2008

Who were the terrorists targeting?

Azam Amir Kasab, 21, a Pakistani national, claimed the terror strikes, which left nearly 200 dead, were intended to kill as many as 5,000 people and that he and his fellow militants were ordered to target whites—especially Britons and Americans. The claims were made in what a police source said was a transcript of his questioning.
—The Times of London, Dec. 1, 2008

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Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
Photograph of Indian policemen walking through the shooting site at Chattrapati Shivaji Railway terminus by STR/AFP/Getty Images. Photograph of Indian army soldiers on Slate's home page by Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images.
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