Why it's important to wait for "The News"

On May 16, 2011, MG Siegler of TechCrunch wrote an article burning Google and other news aggregation sites for their inability to keep up with current news.  Fair enough. Sometimes one company breaks a story and other organizations follow suit using the very same information.  Because Reuters is obviously larger than Techcrunch, they often get listed instead of the original source.  Sometimes a company like Sony will post an update to their blog and the identical content will be listed from another source.  Again, this is a fair complaint.  Obviously Sony wants people to read their website and not others.

However...

In February, Google updated their algorithm to give lower priority to "content farms" and those that use clever search engine manipulations (ahem, JCPenney).  In the process, they inadvertently listed Google Places as a webspam site.  A host of original-source sites saw a dramatic drop in visitation and obviously made a stink about it.  Obviously. Mistakes were made and a lot were corrected.

However...

Today, Ryan Cleary was arrested by Scotland Yard for allegedly creating and deploying a "botnet" used against the British SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency) site. Because the Telegraph is a British site and were the first major site to report it, everyone followed their lead and re-reported the same content. They claimed that this man is a lead member of the Hacktivist group LulzSec.  You know LulzSec... They are the ones that recently took down the CIA and Senate websites.  Here's the problem:  LulzSec isn't denying that Cleary may have tried to deploy a DDoS attack on SOCA.  What they are saying is that if Cleary did attempt anything, it was after SOCA shut down the servers THEMSELVES.  Moreover, Scotland Yard is now denying that Cleary had anything to do with the attack. LulzSec hasn't denied affiliation with Cleary.  It turns out that Cleary is a shut-in (agoraphobic) that runs one of the IRC servers.

On the 10th of June I wrote an article about how news organizations often report untruthful information because they simply don't know what they are talking about.  It's important to actually listen to what is being said by the police without jumping to conclusions.  Let's face it, LulzSec is just the latest patsy for journalists that try their hand at reporting technology.  It's also important to listen to the "terrorists" and take them seriously when they say, "Yeah.  Whatever. It wasn't us". Trust me, hackers LOVE to brag.

I have one important point to make.  How hard do you think it would be to take down the NY Times or the Telegraph if groups like Anonymous and LulzSec can take down Sony, CIA, banks and large portions of a country's infrastructure?

Maybe it's a good thing that search engines like Google wait a while before listing a news flash.  If they can comb through the misinformation, it is of much benefit.  However, many people don't bother to research the reporting of journalists.  Why would they?  These are respectable outlets, right?