Hurricane Sandy: CNN Criticized for Reporting New York Stock Exchange Flooding

During Monday night’s coverage of damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, CNN and the Weather Channel, among others, reported that the New York Stock Exchange was under three feet of water.

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On CNN, meteorologist Chad Myers told Piers Morgan about the damage. “According to the National Weather Service...there’s three feet of water on the trading floor on Wall Street," Myers said. "Three feet of water on the New York Stock Exchange.”

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NYSE officials later denied the reports, and CNN ended up issuing a correction.

The Poynter Institute criticized the error as did some viewers who took to social media.

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The National Weather Service later denied it had mentioned any NYSE flooding, with the inaccurate information apparently coming from an online chat board, according to the Washington Post.

The paper quoted a National Weather Service spokesman as saying that “those reports originated via social media from local NYC media. That report was then mentioned in a forecast oriented chat room discussion." He added: "But the NWS is not the direct source of the report.”