When publishing breaking news, all good editors should exercise a sense of urgency, while also preventing any cause for unnecessary alarm. This is particularly crucial when reporting news that the world is about to come to a sudden, apocalyptic end.
Just ask the Athens Banner-Herald, which on Monday fell “victim to miscue” after an emergency broadcast system notice mistakenly alerted readers that the sun had just exploded:
Erroneous news of the sun’s explosion gave way to one of the best breaking news retractions we’ve seen in awhile: “To our knowledge, the sun has not exploded,” the paper’s director of digital wrote in a post.
