Are we too speedy for our own good?

I had the privilege of visiting Sky News yesterday with my course mates and we were shown around by Rob Kirk who looks after the placement scheme. I had a very interesting conversation with him concerning the Lockerbie bomber mistake, and the problems the new media environment is encountering in terms of staying objective and being as quick as possible- Sky being "first for breaking news". His view matched that of Sean Maguire, a reporter for Reuters, who wrote a blog called "Are we now too speedy for our own good?"


http://blogs.reuters.com/reuters-editors/2009/10/27/are-we-now-too-speedy-for-our-own-good/

In it, he says that when Reuters followed Sky with the Lockerbie story, someone said the following to him: "Reuters has lost its ethical bearings. You’ve sacrificed the sacred tenet of accuracy by rushing to publish information without checking if it is true. Your credibility has suffered, the value of your brand will wither and the service you offer to clients has been devalued."
My first thought was 'Bloody cheek!'The audience who matter are not children. In this day and age, they must understand that breaking news is, exactly as Maguire writes ever-changing and on the ball for that particular second in time. And with organisations like Sky and Reuters, it literally is seconds.
"Real-time readers understand breaking news is contingent, uncertain and provisional," he says.
As long as it employs traditional news values so as to keep evolving mediums as objective as possible and as balanced as it can be, then where does credibility come into it? Not at all I'd say. Indeed, Rob Kirk made a point of telling me that in Scotland yard, Sky is the channel on all of the televisions, for the exact point that they know that Sky will be the quickest. Good on them I say.