A boy named Cassidy Grigg made the rounds of the morning shows Thursday, hitting the Today show on NBC, The Early Show on CBS, and Good Morning America on ABC. He said he was in the Colorado classroom when gunman Duane Morrison entered. Morrison eventually took six girls hostage and murdered one before killing himself. Grigg offered some colorful first-person quotes:
- “He was just an old guy who came on a mission, and I think he got what
he wanted.”
- “I think he just went because he knew he wasn’t going to come out alive.”
- “You could tell that he wanted the females. He tapped me on the
shoulder and he told me to leave the room. I told him, “I don’t want to
leave.”
Unfortunately, Grigg’s mother later revealed that her son was not in the classroom. It’s possible that it all started when the boy told his father he was in the room and the father then relayed this to the Associated Press. At least that’s how this AP correction makes it sound:
In Sept. 27 stories about a deadly school shooting at Platte Canyon High School, The Associated Press quoted parent Tom Grigg giving an account of the ordeal he had heard from his 16-year-old son, Cassidy. Grigg said his son was in the classroom when the gunman picked out his female hostages and the teen had offered to stay with the girls — but the gunman warned him to get out.
The student’s mother said Cassidy Grigg lied.
As is often the case, the boy’s remarkable first person tale was quickly picked up by other outlets, and now the mass corrections/corrective articles have begun. This correction was posted on MSNBC.com:
A story published Thursday morning on MSNBC.com described a 16-year-old boy’s account of a hostage-taking at a Colorado high school in which a gunman fatally shot one girl before killing himself.
The story was based on comments the boy, Cassidy Grigg, made on the “Today” show and to other media outlets. Cassidy said he was in the classroom at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey on Wednesday when the gunman entered.
Cassidy’s mother, Larina Grigg, said Thursday that Cassidy had lied and was actually in another room at the time. Link
WRIC, a television station in Virginia, ran with the story but then received a “withhold” on it and put that online. (A question for TV people out there: would a “withhold” be sent out by the network in a situation like this?) WRIC eventually removed the text from its site. We found this in the Google News cache:
Stations: WITHHOLD all of the items on yesterday’s school shooting in Colorado in which student Cassidy Grigg is quoted as saying he was in the classroom when …
FOX News has a story up, as does the Rocky Mountain News, and many TV affiliates. The boy’s mother told one outlet, “He said, ‘Mom, all those kids were my friends and I just wanted so much to help them. … I guess I just made it up in my mind. I just wanted it to be true so bad’.”
Clarification: A story in yesterday’s Nation pages about Mitt Romney mixing up Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden said that Fox News Channel president Roger Ailes had previously used the similarity between the names Osama and Obama to mock the senator. Fox News says Ailes was making a joke aimed at President Bush, not Obama, when Ailes said in a speech to broadcast executives in March: “And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, `Why can’t we catch this guy?”‘ Link
Every once in a while we see an example of the serious consequences that a media mistake can cause. This latest example happened when a Fox pundit identified a home he said belonged to a terrorist. It did belong to the man he named — three years ago. Now it belongs to a family and they’re living a nightmare because of the mistake. The family is also not satisfied with Fox’s lackluster efforts to correct the error. (Neither are we.) The LA Times has the 
