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Having been very involved in the news business for a lot of years I can attest to just how worthless any of the early reports are regardless of who is giving them. There is a sort of mental illness that infects a news room when breaking news is being handled. It's like they just completely lose their heads and they are so afraid of being scooped by another outlet that they feel compelled to report anything and everything. The most they do is to try to protect themselves by saying all reports are 'unconfirmed' or 'preliminary' or some such wording.

Information coming in from reporters on the scene is just about worthless. Everyone wants to talk to a reporter, or in my case have their picture taken, and the rumors fly like leaves in the wind.

Some early reports are basically accurate, but it's a crap shoot.

I was lucky, I was at the newspaper, but we shared a building with the company-owned TV station. We could wait until pretty late in the evening (10 PM or so) before we had to go on record. Downstairs at the TV news desk it was chaos! They had a 'super' desk arrangment with editors from the three news outlets, newspaper, TV and web online, at one desk. That was one of those ideas that sounded good on paper but didn't work out as well as expected!