Newsrooms want to get it first, but they also want to get it right. This balancing act isn’t new, but it certainly has become much more difficult in the era of 24-hour information.
On Friday, the Washington Post demonstrated what happens when a headline writer apparently regrets his initial take on breaking news.
The economy experienced sluggish growth in the first quarter of 2017, marking the weakest performance since Q1 2014, according to the Commerce Department. Consumer spending barely moved, defense spending was down and businesses invested less on inventories.
In short, not a very good report, and not the best start for President Trump.
However, despite this information, the Washington Post sent out an immediate news alert, rosily titled, “U.S. economy growth rose slightly in first quarter of Trump presidency.”
Hey! That’s great news!
One hour later, the Post apparently thought better of its original headline, and amended the alert so that it now reads, “U.S. economy growth slowed in first quarter of 2017.”
Oh. That’s bad news.
Oops. pic.twitter.com/t3md0CYJlb
— Ryan Kearney (@rkearney) April 28, 2017
The alert itself reads the same for both versions: “The nation’s gross domestic product grew at a sluggish 0.7 percent rate during the first three months of this year, the government reported Friday morning, a day before the symbolic 100-day mark of Donald Trump’s presidency. Though economists expect growth to rebound in the second quarter and suggest the figure may in part reflect measurement error, the low level of growth suggests just how far the administration needs to go to meet its goal of boosting U.S. GDP to 3 percent.”
Though the text is the same, the way the Post characterized the news initially versus how it characterized it eventually is…interesting, to say the least.
