The Complexities of Instant Media

Two weeks ago as I was working late at the library I was perusing Google News and saw a Reuters story discussing Sarah Palin's Republican Convention speech. The story was complete with quotes from the speech and references to her tone towards Obama. The problem with the story was in the fact that the speech hadn't happened yet. Palin wasn't scheduled to speak until after 9 p.m. CDT and the current time was 7 p.m. But the story used the past tense and made no reference to an upcoming speech.

How does this relate to libraries and research? A cardinal rule for researchers should be "consider the source". Obviously, the Palin speech story, taken from a release of her speech to the foreign media, was pretty cut and dry which is fine but it couldn't speak to the crowd response or the flavor of her delivery. Plus, the ability to publish this article the instant it was written brings up the awkward timing and past tense deception that could disrupt those out there that don't understand how the media works and the context in which they publish there work (namely that much of what they published is prepackaged through other sources like press releases and media kits. Also, Reuters is based out of London where there is a 7-8 hour time difference and Palin's speech would have been in the middle of the night London time. Thus, the story was written so the reporter could go to sleep so to speak.)

Do you see why we still need librarians around? How is a college student supposed to make sense of all of this complexity to determine what makes a quality source.