In my experience, the press usually just "reports" what is told to them. They do very little investigation, beyond asking questions from trusted authorities --- i.e., the police.
If a cop looks at a few files of Babs Bunny in a miniskirt, leaps to the conclusion that every one of "thousands" of files in the same folder is the same kind of stuff, and then tells the first reporter he talks to his opinion, the reporter does NOT say "this is the officer's opinion".
Because of this phenomenon, we've had a lot of interesting news articles from otherwise reliable outfits, such as a butter-knife-blunt replica sword that "could have taken an officer's arm off" or demilitarized grenades with holes in the bottom and no powder in them that "could have leveled the block".
Initial reports are just that --- initial. Look only for the general scope and don't count on many of the specifics to be terribly accurate, ESPECIALLY if the specifics are something that would make the speaker look good: "I'm a police officer, and I just busted a massive dope smuggling ring! I should get a raise!" (as two kids with a bag of pot are led to a patrol car).
In my experience, the press usually just "reports" what is told to them. They do very little investigation, beyond asking questions from trusted authorities --- i.e., the police.
If a cop looks at a few files of Babs Bunny in a miniskirt, leaps to the conclusion that every one of "thousands" of files in the same folder is the same kind of stuff, and then tells the first reporter he talks to his opinion, the reporter does NOT say "this is the officer's opinion".
Because of this phenomenon, we've had a lot of interesting news articles from otherwise reliable outfits, such as a butter-knife-blunt replica sword that "could have taken an officer's arm off" or demilitarized grenades with holes in the bottom and no powder in them that "could have leveled the block".
Initial reports are just that --- initial. Look only for the general scope and don't count on many of the specifics to be terribly accurate, ESPECIALLY if the specifics are something that would make the speaker look good: "I'm a police officer, and I just busted a massive dope smuggling ring! I should get a raise!" (as two kids with a bag of pot are led to a patrol car).