Thismorning’s security incident at LAX proved to be a good opportunity tocompare the way two major media outlets (CNN.com and FoxNews.com) covered amajor breaking story related to terrorism.

CNN.com’scoverage

Around10am PST, they were leading the front page of CNN.com with a red “BreakingNews” banner, indicating that a major story was developing. The headlineon this banner was something to the effect of “Security incident shutsdown LAX – details soon” (unfortunately, I don’t remember theexact headline but the paraphrase is accurate in terms of tone). This bannerremained present on the main page for approximately 20 minutes, before beingremoved. For a brief period of time, there was no mention of this story on thesite’s main page. A few minutes later, a sidebar link appeared to thefollowing story:

Security incidents close Los Angeles airport
(CNN) -- Los Angeles International Airport was closed Saturday after twoseparate security incidents, an airport spokesman said.
In one incident, airport police were responding to reports of a"suspicious person."
The other involved a flashlight with corroded batteries that exploded in TomBradley International Terminal.
Seven people were hurt by that explosion.

Department of Homeland Security had a different account.
The agency said that an explosive detection system machine got a positivereading from a corroded battery in a flashlight.
DHS reported that there was no explosion and that there were no injuries thatthey were aware of.

The area was evacuated as a precaution.

A LAPD bomb squad remains on the scene.

Themajor headline on the main CNN.com site was about Hurricane Francis.

FoxNews.com’s coverage

Immediately after I saw CNN’s red-banner announcement, I clicked over toFoxNews.com to see how they were covering the story. They were also leadingwith their equivalent of a “Breaking News” banner. The text of thisbanner was something to the effect of “Report: Explosion prompts LAXshutdown” (again this is a paraphrase and not an exact quote, but I do rememberthe word “explosion” in their headline). Unlike CNN.com, which hadonly a headline and no story, FoxNews linked to the following story:

Report: ExplosionPrompts LAX Shutdown
LOS ANGELES  — An exploding flashlight that injured sevenpeople prompted a shutdown at Los Angeles International Airport (search),an airport worker told FOX News.

Sharon Mayes, parking supervisor at LAX, said two separate security breachescaused airport officials to close off terminals 6,7 and 8, which are connected,and ground all flights. Flights have been allowed to land, but passengers havenot been permitted to exit planes

Mayes also said the LAPD bomb squad was en route to the airport.

It was not immediately possible to verify the report of the explosion. One ofthe incidents occurred at an international terminal security screening station,an airport spokesman said

Airport officials did not provide further information on the incident at TomBradley International Terminal (search).
Officials also did not explain the possible security breach that shut downterminals 6, 7 and 8. The terminals are connected.

Flightswere not being allowed to depart, but inbound flights were being allowed toland, said Paul Turk, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration(search).Passengers were not taken off the planes.

Theycontinued to link to this story via “Breaking News” banners off themain page for some time, even after both CNN.com and MSNBC.com had removedtheirs. Around 10:15am PST, Fox changed the banner text to read “Some Flights Taking Off From LAX, but didnot change the headline on their story until approximately 10:35am when they removedtheir “Breaking News” banner and replaced it with the followingsidebar story from the AP wire:

Mythoughts

Both CNNand FoxNews used the “red banner” to indicate that a major storywas breaking. However, the text that they used in their respective banners isindicative of the tone of their overall coverage. CNN’s banner wasneutral, emotionless – it conveyed that something security-releated hadhappened at LAX, that the airport was shut down, and (most importantly) wedidn’t know all the details. The story that CNN eventually ranwas equally short and emotionless. Their story conveyed that the LAPD bombsquad was on the scene as a precautionary measure, but overall the incident wasreally a non-event. To me, the tone of CNN’s coverage was generallydispassionate and emotionless.

In contrast, FoxNews seemed excessively sensationalistic and alarmist. Theirinitial “breaking news” headline was completely unwarranted. Puttingthe words “explosion” and “LAX” together in the sameheadline evokes subconscious images of fireballs and 9/11, even though there wasno indication that anything of that magnitude had actually happened. Theirheadline was written to make people assume the worst in the absence of realfacts – it’s fearmongering and tabloid journalism at its worst.

It’s true that FoxNews had a story up before CNN, and thus could beconsidered to have broken the story first. However, the initial story that Foxran was so bad that it’s almost laughable. Again, they led the story withthe sensationalistic headline “Explosion prompts LAX shutdown”,which immediately gets people to assume the worst. Then they attempt to clarifythe events by citing a parking attendant as their primary source (to befair, she was actually a parking supervisor, but still…). Not anairport official, not someone from DHS, but a parking attendant. It’salmost as if Fox took the statement of the first person at LAX that would talkto them and ran with it.

When things calmed down a bit and it became clear that the whole thing wasreally a non-event, Fox toned its coverage down and ran with the AP story, whichwas much more toned down. Specficially, the word “explosion” wasreplaced with “security incident” in the headlines. For that, Igive them credit.

I think this story goes a long way to show the difference between CNN andFox. How they behaved in the first few moments of a major story differentiated(in my mind) a responsible media outlet from a bunch of journalistic hackslooking to get a rise out of the public. CNN.com restrained themselves, ledwith a calm and dispassionate headline, and held off reporting anything untilthe details had become clear. FoxNews went for the “big bang” –they led with a sensationalistic and alarmist headline, broke a weak andunderreported story and basically hit the panic button until the facts made itimpossible for them to continue on that course.

This is why I don’t pay too much attention to FoxNews.