There are lessons we all can learn from the handling of information concerning the death of legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. Coach Paterno died on Sunday morning following a two-month battle with lung cancer. Unfortunately, several news organizations prematurely reported Paterno's passing on Saturday night based, ultimately, on unconfirmed information first posted by a student media website on the Penn State campus.
Onward State claimed it had multiple sources who confirmed Coach Paterno's death and posted the news online around 8:45 pm Saturday. CBS Sports gave the story viral life by posting a Paterno obituary on its website, seemingly based on information from the Onward State post.
Many organizations and individuals followed suit, tweeting and re-tweeting links to the CBS story on Twitter and posting on Facebook. (I'm guilty of both.) Here in Columbia, the mis-information found its way into coverage of the GOP primary as news anchors paused to announce the "breaking news" that Joe Paterno had died. In all cases, ti would seem that everyone trusted (assumed) that CBS had vetted the information and that it was accurate. We learned how wrong that we were when Paterno's sons took to Twitter to let everyone know the rumors of their father's death were premature.
