This morning on CNN’s Reliable Source, Howard Kurtz and his panel looked into Friday’s bomb scare and hostage situation at Hillary Clinton‘s campaign headquarters in Rochester, NH. In early reporting, FNC’s Carl Cameron said the suspect was, “a man by the name of Troy Stanley. We know this from an eyewitness by the name of Cody Bennett who spoke with us a few moments ago, who is friends with Troy Stanley’s son.”
Turns out the suspect was a man named Leeland Eisenberg. Sites including DailyKos and BraveNewFilms were quick to highlight the error.
Kurtz discussed it with Linda Douglass and Jim Geraghty on CNN.
Click continued to read the transcript…
KURTZ: Is it irresponsible to be naming a suspect based on a friend of the guy’s son while people’s lives are still in jeopardy?
DOUGLASS: Well, it’s always hard to second-guess somebody who is doing a live shot in the middle of a breaking story like that. On the other hand, when you’re going to release a name, it is generally the policy of most networks to make sure that you have got a second source, that you’ve verified it through law enforcement authorities and so forth. I’m not sure that that was done in this case.
KURTZ: And Jim Geraghty, others picked it up, including The Huffington Post. And this guy, Troy Stanley, who had nothing to do with this incident, ends up being, at least briefly, falsely accused of a crime.
GERAGHTY: …It’s one of those things as a journalist you want — you know, you want to be the first with the story. When you hear something like that, you appear to have an eyewitness, the urge to get it out and tell it to the world has got to be overwhelming. But, you know, it’s a breaking story. I guess we should have — you know, have a certain degree of sympathy when things are breaking and changing rapidly.
KURTZ: And Cameron did attribute where he had gotten the information from. Unfortunately, the information turned out to be wrong.