On New Year’s morning, we were trying to distill the various media reports and government statements about circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack in New Orleans (including, astonishingly, whether it actually was a terrorist attack, even as it was already known that a man flying the notorious jihadist flag had plowed a pickup truck into crowd of Bourbon Street revelers, and that ten were dead — a number that has since risen to 14). In my first post on the matter — having been through this scenario too many times in the 32 years since the 1993 World Trade Center — I cautioned that “initial reports on these incidents tend to be rife with error.”
With respect to the reporters, as a general matter (there are always exceptions) I find that errors in these situations are just that, errors, not intentional misstatements. People are trying to get it right, and they’re usually good about couching their assertions in uncertainty if they are uncertain.
Comments