A few weeks ago, there were news reports on the death of soul singer Etta James, who had been in ill health for much of the latter half of 2011. But while they spread like wildfire on social media, James didn’t die until this past week.

Late this evening, there were reports of the death of Joe Paterno in a hospital in State College. It took a spokesman at the hospital and Twitter feeds from family members to refute this report.

Now that information can flit at lightning speed across the globe, it is more important than ever that said news — “the first draft of history,” as it is said — is right the first time.

The fact that so many news organizations ran with this as fact is not journalism’s finest hour.