It’s about scoop gathering reiging paramount over letting things unfold without jumping to conclusions. Being first to report trumps accurate, rellevant and efficient reporting. It’s about causing things to unfold rather than letting them unfold, observing and reporting.

Whatever value there was in rushing out to the scene of the body when they thought it was Powell still held true. That timely value is now gone.

As for your question…it’s natural tendency, for better or for worse, for us in the media to react to stuff.

Here’s how today plays out.

Body is found in desert.
People speculate that it’s Susan Powell.
We are invested in the Susan Powell case to the tune of more than a month of coverage.
We leave Josie Fox, which has no new angles as of this afternoon, to investigate body.
Reports out that body is that of a regular Joe six pack.
Back to life as normal.

It’s not nice, it’s not clean, but that’s the business. The sad fact is that the hierarchy of what the general public are interested in at this point is: Susan Powell –> Josie Fox –> Randon man in desert.

Details will come out about the man, and it’ll get a lot of media play especially if the details are out of the ordinary. The media’s job, again for better or for worse, is to prioritize their coverage and present it to viewers. I don’t think today was a MEDIA FAIL.