Our incessant demand for minute by minute updates has created a media that must publish non stop to satisfy our ravenous desires.

1. Legal Daily News Feature
The Misinformation Super Highway
By Joshua Nave
There are three things I miss about the 80’s. 1) The music 2) Judicial Nominees getting a floor vote and 3) News outlets that weren’t so
pressed to provide minute by minute updates and took the time to research and verify stories before going to press.
03/06/10 feeding frenzy (although my poor liberal heart just about burst
with excitement until I thought about it for half a second).
Anyone else remember listening
to REO Speedwagon on vinyl, The source of the rumor appears to have been a law school
or maybe with one of those exercise in trusting informants gone horribly, and ironically,
newfangled Walkman thingies? In 1981 REO Speedwagon wrong. Abovethelaw.com has tracked it down to a 1L class
released ‘’You Take it on the Run’’ which started off with this at Georgetown Law where a professor giving a lecture on
line: ‘’Heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who informants and probable cause started the class by telling his
heard it from another you’ve been messing around...’’ students he had reliable sources that he couldn’t reveal that
told him Roberts would be stepping down, and admonished
What does this have to do with the law, legal appointments the class not to tell anyone. Within 10 minutes, RadarOnline
or news outlets? Earlier this week a rumor spread like wildfire had the story and ran with it. 30 minutes after making the
through the blawgosphere that Chief Justice John Roberts announcement, the professor retracted it, saying it was a
was about to retire. Numerous outlets ran with the story, first lesson in how an otherwise reliable source could give bad
reported by Radar Online. info. Did the professor not realize that his students all had
cell phones with text capabilities and laptops tapped into the
I’d like to engage you in a small intellectual exercise. university network? And how gullible were these students,
Name three things that would compel John Roberts to allow RadarOnline, and every other blog that ran with the story?
President Obama name his successor. I’ll wait.
There’s a larger lesson here. We, the information craving
Still stuck? Okay, name one thing. No? Me either. public, are equally to blame for stories like this one. Our
incessant demand for minute by minute updates has created
Everyone that reported on the story is now frantically posting a media that must publish non stop to satisfy our ravenous
retractions. We’re happy to say we abstained from the initial desires.
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