Last Tuesday, Captain Rex Evans had one of those days.
You know the kind of day I mean. The kind where you're the public information officer for the Liberty County, TX sheriff's department and you can't get any sheriffing done because the whole world of media is phoning you for the scoop on the dozens of dismembered bodies your deputies are digging around for over yonder in the town of Hardin.
That's one aggravation. Another is how bent out of shape folks become when they find out that what triggered the investigation by the sheriff, state police and the FBI was a phone tip from a woman who claimed she had a psychic vision of the crime scene.
Then, on top of all that aggravation, the cadaver dogs come up cadaverless. Nothing but a wild corpse chase. Not so much as a stray limb. Dang.
In a matter of hours last Tuesday, every new wrinkle of this hubbub shot 'round the world many times over. Such august news outlets as CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, SkyNews, Agence France Presse and Reuters, all — with varying degrees of attribution — falsely reported the grisly discovery of dozens of mutilated victims, mostly children. In the frenzied first 30 minutes of activity, one news organization after another built its wrong reporting upon the wrong reporting of others — The Times citing Reuters citing "local media" citing, in some cases, nobody.
But Captain Evans doesn't think the big culprits were the professional journalists. This I know because I had a nice chat with him trying to determine why Channel 9 in Australia was reporting about unearthing dead and...
