The perils of 24 hour news "reporting"

On Friday morning last week, CNN began to report what it thought was an incident on the Potomac River. They reported "shots fired" by the Coast Guard and other developments that - even if not the anniversary of the September 11 attacks from 2001 - would make anyone raise at least an eyebrow.

Here's the problem: the whole thing was a training exercise. So "low-level" in fact, no one seemed to care.

Except CNN.

And then AP. And Fox.

Read this posting from Poynter about the whole thing, as well as some questions producers might want to ask themselves before convulsing with ecstasy from the possibility they're reporting the next 9/11.