Even on quiet summer weekends, huge news stories spread to millions more swiftly than ever before
James Peeler’s phone was blowing up with messages as he drove home from church in Texas. Wendy Schweiger was reading a book on her couch in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when he saw something on Facebook. After a late-night swim in the Baltic Sea off Finland, Matti Niiranen clicked on a CNN livestream.
Everyone learned that President Joe Biden has given up his re-election bid minutes after he posted a statement online without warning on a summer Sunday.
Eight days after the attempted murder about former President Donald Trump, it was the second consecutive weekend in July that a seismic American story broke at a time when most people weren’t watching the news. Biden’s announcement was a shocking example of how fast and far news travels in today’s always-connected world.
“It seemed like a third of the nation knew right away,” said Bill Wheatley, a veteran news director, “and they told another third.”
Wheatley, now retired and on summer vacation in Maine, had sat down to check his e-mail and absently refreshed the CNN.com home page on his computer. If he hadn’t heard the news that way, text messages from friends would have alerted him soon.
At 1:46 p.m. Eastern Time, the time Biden posted his announcement On X, an estimated 215,000 people were logged into one of the 124 major U.S. news websites. Fifteen minutes later, those sites had 893,000 readers, according to Chartbeat.
On apnews.com, 3,580 people visited the site during the 1:46 p.m. minute. Nearly an hour later, at 2:43 p.m., The Associated Press’ online news destination reached its midday peak of 18,936 new visitors. CNN.com and its news app saw usage increase fivefold within 20 minutes of the news breaking, the network said.
Television networks began regular programming for the story between 1:50 and 2:04 a.m. During the relatively quiet quarter before 2 a.m., a total of 2.69 million people tuned in to CNN, Fox News Channel or MSNBC, according to the Nielsen company. The audience for those three networks grew to 6.84 million between 2 and 4 a.m. Eastern. Add in ABC and CBS, which also had special coverage during those hours, and there were at least 9.27 million people following the story on television.
How did everyone get there so quickly? As Wheatley suggested, word of mouth played a big part. Peeler said he didn’t open his text messages until he stopped his car, to his credit.
Many people also have notifications set up on their phones.
“Our phones are constantly beeping and we always have them with us,” said Brian Ott, a professor of media and communications at Missouri State University and author of “The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage.”
Ott and his wife were traveling in Belgrade, Serbia, and, because of the time difference, had gone to bed Sunday night before Biden made his announcement. Ott found out the next morning when he checked online news sites and told his wife when she woke up.
“Oh, I know,” she replied. She was logged into X when she got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.
Since then, he has traveled to Italy and visited Rome and Florence. According to Ott, everyone he met who told him he spoke English wanted to talk to him about Biden.
“I feel like the pressure is the same for everyone,” he said. “In our digital world, information is capital and everyone wants to show their capital.”
At his summer home in Pyharanta, Finland, Niiranen has a keen interest in American politics, which the semi-retired writer says dates back to his time as an exchange student in Michigan. He had gone swimming after 10 p.m. on Sunday, when it stays light longer there.
Niiranen had read rumors that Biden would withdraw. When he sat down on his terrace after the water, he checked the CNN stream and saw that this was indeed the case.
“Interesting elections you have there!” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on it.”
Tracy Jasnowski was visiting family in Canaan, New Hampshire and had a week where she was mostly offline due to spotty internet. Once a day, both adults and children would retreat with their devices to a spot on the lawn where the connection was more consistent. Then she discovered it.
“I honestly thought I was going to throw up,” she said. “I was shocked. I was out of control. I had no idea that was going to happen.”
Even though she hadn’t learned it yet, Jasnowski said she soon started getting texts from friends. And when her father woke up from his nap, he turned on Fox News.
A generation or two ago, people had to watch TV or listen to the radio to hear a special report about breaking news, said Wheatley, a former NBC News executive. Then people spread the word by telling friends or family. Now, with social media, text message alerts and one-click websites, news travels “much, much faster.”
“The next logical question,” he said, “is how accurate is it?”
It’s a mantra drilled into young journalists: Report the news quickly, but more importantly, do it well. One mistake in a big, breaking story can derail a career. This month’s big stories illustrate the pressures that come with the need for speed.
Almost immediately after Biden’s announcement, it became a key part of the narrative that reporters filed the claim that he had not endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to succeed him. He did so within half an hour, but that’s an eternity for those who want to ask questions or spread conspiracy theories.
Likewise, video of the Trump rally where shots were fired immediately appeared on television screens. But most of the initial news reports were extremely carefulSticking to what was known: Trump was being chased off the stage by Secret Service agents. There was blood visible. There was a noise that sounded like gunfire.
This in turn led to some journalists criticize because he was too cautious, too reserved to call it an assassination attempt. Yet not all the facts are known quickly; almost two weeks later, during a congressional hearingFBI Director Christopher Wray said it’s still not entirely clear whether Trump was hit by a bullet or shrapnel. The next day, the FBI announced He concluded that it was a bullet.
In other words, it often happens that there is more to a story than meets the eye. The frenzy of the first news requires that you stick strictly to the facts that are available at that moment, regardless of what becomes clear later.
When Peeler arrived at his destination in Texas last week and checked what his friends had texted him about Biden, he called the websites of local TV network affiliates. In Pennsylvania, Schweiger immediately turned to the AP and The New York Times online.
They were both grateful to have a reliable place to get the facts.
“I assume that news is available 24 hours a day and that there are always people who can be deployed for anything at any time,” Schweiger said.
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him on http://twitter.com/dbauder.