On Tuesday, Feb. 12, reports started being broadcast that fugitive and disgruntled ex-policeman, Christopher Dorner, had been located inside a cabin in Big Bear, California.
This news followed a string of murders who LAPD asserts were the work of Dorner. All of these murder victims were either law enforcement officers, or were the family of officers.
When Dorner was thought to be cornered in this cabin, the response from police was unprecedented, as was the horrible coverage by the major news networks.
The Christopher Dorner incident that was broadcast on TV screens Tuesday night, taught us all an important lesson that extends further than the gruesome violence that occurred in that cabin in Big Bear—it taught us that the major TV news networks are not the best place to go for information on a breaking news item.
When ex-LAPD officer and Navy veteran, Christopher Dorner was fixating America’s TV news consumers, the journalistic star of the night was Reddit.com, where members from around the world crowd sourced and disseminated the information concerning Dorner’s mountain-top siege and used the members themselves to vet the information for its validity. This proved to be more effective means
of broadcasting the truth, than the big money and resources of CNN could offer.
While Reddit users already knew that a SWAT team raided the cabin which allegedly held Dorner, CNN announced this fact 20-minutes later.
The reason for this was online links were posted earlier on Reddit which broadcast the police radio chatter as it was happening. Because of this live and unfiltered access to the police radio channels, Reddit users also knew that CNN had prematurely reported that Dorner’s body was found in the raid on the cabin.
However, CNN quickly recanted this report once it became apparent that Reddit was once again scooping the huge news network.
Soon, police officers and ex- officers were posting to the Reddit forum explaining the sometimes cryptic police radio communications.
Topographical maps were posted of the mountainous region where this monumental police action was taking place. Military and ex-military members were giving their opinions as to the possible tactics
Dorner might employ to avoid death from the hundreds of police officers surrounding the small cabin. If an informational item was posted to Reddit that did not include the source of the information, the post was quickly voted down into oblivion.
This incident shows us that the Reddit community, while working outside the constraints of journalism, still kept to journalistic standards that any journalism professor would be proud of, while the 24-hour news providers like CNN put journalistic integrity aside for a chance to be the first to broadcast a breaking news item.
This proved to be CNN’s downfall Tuesday night. While some newcomers to Reddit excitingly posted the latest rumor regarding the police raid—the more knowledgeable Reddit users schooled these posters and explained to them the errors of their ways.
