http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/02/17/mattingly.fire.in.the.sky.cnn

A newspaper that hits the presses at sometime after 11 pm enjoys several hours of lead time during the day and they assume that the paper will be read in the morning.

Broadcast television news has a much shorter lead time. To such a degree that it vanishes in the glaring necessity to “go live” and to time everything to the second. Unlike the newspaper, whose advertisements don’t demand a specific time slot, television commercials are evanescent. Blink and you miss it. Sponsors do not like that.

But there is sufficient misinformation in all media to instruct the careful reader/viewer of the need to demand evidence and a fair accounting of doubt when reporting a breaking story. And updates that demonstrate same are always welcome and frequently instructive.

It’s just that the entire industry is so caught up in their need to placate their sponsors and benefactors who have agendas that have nothing to do with responsible reportage.

Long live the blogosphere! It’s variety belies any rigid dogma.

I feel you are making the same error with respect to traditional media that they are doing to the blogging world: Using the worst examples to generalize about the whole field. You cite probably some of the worst examples out there especially compared to your own site (one of the best in astronomical reporting, IMO). Now some out there on the web are in fact claiming this object is a UFO. Does that mean all bloggers or internet sites do? No, and that would be silly. But some in traditional media will point to those UFO sites as reason why sites like yours should be dismissed, and I feel the same is going on here.

The print media did a much better job in reporting than TV sites, like you link to. On day one, they mostly reported the uncertainty. On day two, they quotes experts, including local astronomers, on why it was unlikely to be a meteorite. It’s not perfect by a long shot. But that media has more variety in coverage than you are characterizing here.

Think about any time the media has written about something you know about. How much of it did they get right? Now apply that percentage to everything they report and be afraid.

Why didnt they get footage of a scrap yard? That would have allowed for much more interesting “specutainment!” (Soviet cars from space? You decide!)

The Alberta government was in the process of issuing an alert to residents in the southern part of the province on Friday morning, Feb. 13, 2009, regarding a Russian rocket that was re-entering the atmosphere. The rocket was launched on Feb. 10, 2009, and was resupplying the International Space Station. In the end, the debris fell off the coast of southern Africa.

According to CTV News:

“NORAD spokesperson, Lt(N) Desmond James made the following statement to CTV News: ‘On 13 Feb, North American Aerospace Command tracked the re-entry of a rocket body at approximately noon EST following the launch of a Russian rocket that resupplied the International Space Station. The object, 10-square meters in size, skipped off the atmosphere and re-entered off the southern coast of Africa. NORAD followed prescribed assessment procedures during the reentry and officials from the command deemed it not a threat to populated land areas in North America. NORAD does not have any further details on the reentry.’”

The full story is here:

http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090213/CGY_space_junk_090213/20090214/?hub=CalgaryHome

I might be a cynic, but I think I’m a realist. Click on my “website” link to see a “bad science” cnn.com headline that I just had to save…

Well, I’ve watched all of the news reports, and personally I think it was a UFO driven by a Bigfoot, which is obviously why it crashed. Everyone knows that Bigfoot is an awful pilot.

Please. Clearly Elvis and Jesus were out for a drive in their space capsule when Elvis tossed the wrapper from his peanut-butter chili-dog burrito out the window. Of course Jesus transformed it into space debris … loaves and fishes being so passe.

Somehow, covering this event faster, more accurately, and better than any newspaper or local news station, but still being made fun of for being just “a blogger” doesn’t make me feel confident that a lot of the people still entrenched in the old media have a clue about teh intertoobz.

Patience, Phil. Relief is on the way. Our children, who we will (are or, have) raise to apply the scientific method to all they hear and see, will one day be in charge of the media (and marketing and politics). Then the media will be respectable and reliable.

I know it sucks that most of us will be pretty long in the tooth by then. Even worse, it could take two generations. By then we’ll be dead.

But anyway, patience. It could happen sooner.

@John: I hear you but would it kill them to say they are not sure or flat out admit they don’t know rather than publish stuff that ends up being completely wrong? I have a lot more respect for people who are willing to say “I don’t know” as opposed to those who try to BS their way through things.

The Bad Astronomer has been reporting all weekend about the fireball which was sighted over Texas over the weekend. At first, many sources were mistakenly reporting that this was debris from the satellites that collided last week.

Despite the fact …