arthur solomonMy first job as a newsman was in the toy department, as the sports beat was called by reporters covering more serious subjects, as politics.

But the past several days have shown that there is little difference between reporters who cover sports and politics: Getting it first is now increasingly more important than getting it correct. And that’s a problem for most people who don’t have the time to stay on top of the 24/7 news cycle.

The examples that prove my premise are many. But two recent stories that stand-out concern sports and politics:

The first, but definitely not the most important paradigm, concerns Wilmer Flores, the New York Mets infielder. Flores became emotional during a game when all the media - print, radio, television and social -for hours reported that Flores was traded. Of course, that didn’t happen, and the justification was that the information came from trusted sources, as is usually the alibi when the media gets it wrong.

The decidedly more important example was the New York Times July 23 report that Hillary Clinton was the subject of a “criminal inquiry” about her emails while she was secretary of state. It received major coverage Sunday, when a Clinton spokeswoman went public about the Times refusing to publish a letter about the inaccuracies in the story.

The Times did run corrections but the damage to the Clinton campaign was already done and her being the subject of a “criminal inquiry”will probably resurface many times as we approach the 2016 election.

Does anyone except the ego-centric media care about who gets it first? Yes, probably the agenda-leakers of the information who want to make certain the misinformation is released prior to an accurate story

The Flores story wrongo, as unfortunate as it was for the infielder, will not have any lasting damage of importance.

That cannot be said of the Times major blunder regarding the Clinton story. Even though the Times ran wishy-washy corrections Clinton's political enemies are probably now preparing attack commercials referencing the Times story without mentioning the corrections.There is an important lesson that ethical people in our business should learn from media miscues: The next time a reporter says “I don’t trust your information.” it’s okay to respond, “I stand 100% behind my information.Can your outlet say the same?"

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Arthur Solomon, a former senior VP at Burson-Marsteller, contributes to PR and sports business publications, consults on PR projects and serves on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at [email protected].