live web feed for the June 26, Royal Albert Hall event

[Petra Pan]

Michelle:
> Well, how do we know that whoever
> wrote the reports have their facts
> right?

I can't tell which reports you are 
asking about so I'm going to assume 
that you are not familiar with the 
three discussed so far.  Sorry if I 
cover grounds you're already familiar 
with...

TLC's report is based on a piece 
taken from the Associated Press 
newswire.  IIRC, both the AP and 
Reuters generate news reports for 
media outlets, who, if they are 
subscribers, can then reprint the 
reports in their newspapers, 
magazines, websites, etc.  Really 
big newspapers don't usually rely 
on the newswires to fill their pages 
but as long as they subscribe, even 
the smaller papers who don't have 
the resources to open bureaus around 
the world or aren't being sent press 
releases can still carry news their 
staff writers couldn't write.

This is to say the newswires are 
usually pretty good and they usually 
get the latest info/press releases 
since what they generate ends up 
filling a great many column inches 
of newsprint.

Not that the newswires are perfect - 
they do make mistakes, especially when 
trying to beat their competition to 
break a story...and I suspect that the 
AP may have done just that.

Here's Scholastic's press release 
about the web feed:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030606/nyf055_1.html

This is from a service called PRNewswire, 
which, like BusinessWire, distributes 
press releases, that which are generated 
by the subjects of the information/news 
items themselves.  My rule of thumb is to 
defer to press releases for specific facts
but defer to wire reports and other news 
articles for more objective commentary 
that may help readers put the news in 
perspective.

Since 

(1) the press release from Scholastic 
states that "...MSN will broadcast the 
entire event live via the Internet at 
www.msn.co.uk/harrypotter at 11:00 a.m. 
(EDT) on June 26 in the U.S...." and 

(2) 4pm London time IS 11am EDT, 

I would seriously question the AP report 
that puts the web feed at noon EDT.

Petra
a
n  :)

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