We currently live in a society which demands to receive instant access to information just as quickly as the new sources find out themselves. However, is this crunch on time that’s put on top of news companies shoulders effecting the quality and substance of what we are actually reading?
Giving the public instant access to stories as they come in means news companies opt to passby the editing process of an article before submitting it. This can result in false facts, typos, a lack of substance within the story, and sometimes just down right bad writing.
For example, during the live updates of the SandyHook Elementary shooting the media was giving us very mixed “facts” about what was going on. Many articles and live feeds from news stations stated that the shooters mother worked for the school as a teacher and that she was inside when the tragedy occurred, then they said she was actually at home, then switched to saying she wasn’t a teacher and had no relation to the school at all. Talk about confusing! But these slightly inaccurate, yet instant articles are much more likely to be read more so than the ones who wait until they find out each and every fact about a story, check for typos, and run it through an editor for substance and structure, even if it ends up being a better more accurate account of the story in the long run.
As much as all of us would like to say that the quality and accuracy of literature is what’s most important to us, the current world we live in disagrees. Therefore, we will continue in the path where a race to be the first, outweighs the theory of “save the best for last”.