Earlier today, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was seriously injured when his motorcycle was struck by another vehicle in downtown Pittsburgh.  Roethlisberger sustained a broken nose, broken jaw, facial lacerations and severe injuries to both knees.  He was listed in serious but stable condition before entering surgery.

Here is the most recent Fox Sports link regarding this story: http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/5687558

There seem to be two major problems with the accident: one, that Roethlisberger wasn't wearing a helmet and two, that as long as the Steelers are paying him millions of dollars he shouldn't have been on that motorcycle in the first place.

Personally, I find another aspect of this story much more bothersome.  In the hours after the accident, at least one online blog posted an ill-informed rumor that Roethlisberger was dead:

"I cannot confirm anything, only that I'm hearing conflicting reports that Ben Roethlisberger passed away at 2:47 EST on June 12, 2006."

The writer did not immediately name the sources of his conflicting reports, revealing later that the "Roethlisberger is dead" information came from a post on wikipedia.org.  The Wikipedia web site is open source, meaning it can be accessed and edited by virtually anyone.  This makes it a valuable resource for historical data, but not for breaking news stories.

Citing improper sources is an acceptable mistake, one I'm sure I made more than once in my academic career.  The problem, however, is the reasoning behind such a post.  For decades, the race in the newspaper business has been to get the scoop, to track down the big story before your competitors do.  Now that we are fully entrenched in the Information Age, this race has not diminished; even more stories are out there and an unprecedented number of people are still fighting to be the first to break them.  The difference is that the process is now occurring at breakneck speed, leading to an out-of-control situation that sometimes causes the facts to be pushed aside in favor of making the big splash.

In all honesty, my first thought upon hearing of Roethlisberger's accident was regarding the severity of his injuries.  Will he be ready for training camp?  For the first game?  In time for the playoffs?  Was Super Bowl XL the last time we'll see Big Ben on a football field?  Just how badly is he hurt?  I'm sure I even wondered if he survive surgery and if not, how would I feel.  But to the best of my knowledge, there were no facts to support that concern, so that's all it was: concern, not a story.

It seems that in this case, the rush to be the first, to beat the big organizations -- ESPN or Fox Sports, to name two -- to the punch led to the creation of a rumor that thankfully was proved to be untrue.

I'd like to close by saying that while writing this entry, I decided to go back and look a little more closely at the blog on which this unfortunate rumor was "broken".  My goal was to get a greater sense of what this particular blogger was all about: is he the sort to throw out crazy random rumors, or does he favor careful analysis of interesting issues.  In his defense, my initial instinct is the latter; the blog in question is very well done by a very talented young man -- he's certainly capable of putting forth good ideas and defending them with logical, factual arguments.  In the future, I hope he (and all of us, really, in all forms of media) is more careful.