Case Study 2.1: Using Social Media as a Police Scanner Anthony De Rosa is the editor-in-chief at Circa1, a true mobilefirst news organization. He was formerly the social media editor at Reuters and has over 15 years’ experience as a technologist for companies such as Newmark Knight-Frank, Merrill Lynch, BristolMyers Squibb and Reuters Media. In 2011, he won the award for Best Storytelling Innovation from Reuters for live coverage of events using blogging and social media, and recently won a journalism award from el Mundo. He tweets at: @AntDeRosa2. The medium by which we’re gathering information may change, but the principles of verification always apply. Challenging what you see and hear, seeking out and verifying the source, and talking to official and primary sources remain the best methods for accurate reporting. At Circa, we track breaking news from all over the world - but we publish only what we can confirm. That requires that we use social media to monitor breaking news as it happens so we can apply verification. Remember that the information on social media should be treated the same as any other source: with extreme skepticism. For the most part, I view the information the same way I would something I heard over a police scanner. I take in a lot and I put back out very little. I use the information as a lead to follow in a more traditional way. I make phone calls, send emails and contact primary sources who can confirm what I’m hearing and seeing (or not). In the case of the 2013 shooting at the Los Angeles airport, for example, we observed reports from the airport coming from eyewitnesses and contacted LAPD, the LA FBI field office and the LA county coroner. If we couldn’t independently verify what we saw and heard, we held it until we could. Even in cases where major news organizations were reporting information, we held back until we could confirm with primary sources. Often these organizations cite unnamed law enforcement sources, and as we’ve seen with the Boston Marathon bombing, the Navy Yard shooting, the Newtown shooting and other situations, anonymous law enforcement sourcing is often unreliable. 19