Russert Scoop on Wikipedia Earns Punishment for Updater

In the super-fast world of the Internet, if a story breaks, you can expect the Wikipedia entry for that subject to be updated faster than you can blink. In the case of Tim Russert's sad death on June 13th, NBC contacted other networks and media outlets in an attempt to hold back the news long enough to notify his family vacationing in Italy. Before they knew it, however, it was already updated on Wikipedia.

Russert collapsed from a heart attack in NBC’s Washington newsroom around 1:40 PM EDT; he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a hospital at 2:23. The network announced the news at 3:39.

The first edits into Wikipedia, however, went in at 3:01 PM EDT. Several other edits went in, which changed things into "past tense" as well as adding his date of death. The IP address revealed that the changes came from Internet Broadcasting (IB). IB is a company based in St. Paul, Minn., that provides Web services to a variety of companies - including NBC, according to their client list.

If you look at the Wikipedia records still further, you can see that the edits were rolled back to a pre-obituary state about 11 minutes after the first edits. Those edits also came from IB.

According to the New York Times, a spokeswoman for IB said on Friday that

"a junior-level employee made updates to the Wikipedia page upon learning of Mr. Russert’s passing, thinking it was public record." She added that the company had "taken the necessary measures with the employee and apologized to NBC." NBC News said it was told the employee was fired.

However, other reports are that the employee was merely suspended.

If the employee learned of Russert's death via a confidential NBC communication, then indeed, perhaps suspension or firing may have been warranted. It could also be said that he probably should have been working instead of updating Wikipedia.

On the other hand, should mainstream media just admit to itself that the ability to delay news is simply gone in this day and age of instant updates, Twitter and Wikipedia? What do you readers think?