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Commentary: Online Media's Highs and Lows of Mir Coverage
Most Americans probably heard about the Mir accident on the morning news Wednesday, June 25, a few hours after the accident. Those who followed the news of the accident that day at work or school using one of the online news services found a wide range of quality in the coverage of the accident.
As usual, Florida Today's Space Online (http://www.flatoday.com/space/today/) did an excellent job with their coverage of the incident, combining wire reports with articles by their own reporters. In the following days they provided archives of previous days' coverage in addition to new reports.
CNN Interactive (http://www.cnn.com)/ also provided extensive coverage, updating their stories several times a day and providing access to previous reports. In addition, they provided some additional services, such as special message area devoted to the accident so people could discuss the incident and its consequences, and also provided live online chats with people like Marcia Smith, a space policy analyst.
ABCNews.Com (http://www.abcnews.com/) also did a credible job, providing stories, background information, and some commentary, but not to the same level as Florida Today or CNN. FOX News (http://www.foxnews.com/) provided no original content of its own but did have an extensive archive of Reuters and AP wire stories on the accident. CBS's Up to the Minute (http://uttm.com/) provided good updates in its "Space Space" section by reporter Bill Harwood. USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/) did a reasonable job, although finding older versions of reports was difficult.
MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.com/), though, did not meet expectations. Although providing commentary by veteran space reporter Jay Barbree and a viewers' poll on whether the station should be abandoned, the overall quality of the reports were not as high as the other services. The reports included such questionable statements like "one or more of the modules were sealed off", implying that additional modules on Mir had been closed off, which was never the case, and never reported as such by the other news services. A lack of archives of previous versions of the articles also hurt their coverage.
MSNBC's worst gaffe, though, was in a statement by reporter Rob Reynolds. In an audio segment included in an article, Reynolds claimed the Soyuz module was 11 years old - as old as the Mir core module. "If Mir is 11 years old, well so is the Soyuz, and we don't for sure what effect those 11 years of space has had on that capsule when it tries to reenter," he said.
Compounding matters, he added, "I don't like to speculate but it may be that there are some reasons, good reasons for staying up there, maybe even better to stay than to come down, if you know what I mean."
When informed of the major error on Saturday by SpaceViews, an MSNBC editor responded on Monday that the "offending clip" had been removed. However, as of Tuesday morning, the clip was still available and linked to their main Mir story page. If you have Real Audio installed on your computer you can listen in at http://www.msnbc.com/news/ramfiles/0627reynolds5.ram. The full MSNBC story is online at http://www.msnbc.com/news/82420.asp.