How culpable is the media?

It seems like whenever there's a tragedy - a gunman kills innocents in a school, at a mall or what have you - the news folks on TV and probably even on Twitter start gossiping. Someone tells them something, and they report it instead of saying they'll wait until they learn all the facts.

 Rush pointed out this very well today:

They were looking desperately to find a way.  And if you want to pooh-pooh that, I just want to remind you that after the Aurora mass shootings at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, ABC News first reported the shooter was a member of a Tea Party, in an effort to cast aspersions on peaceful, nonviolent conservative Republicans.  Of course, it turned out not to be true.  After the event involving Gabby Giffords wound badly in Arizona, the first thing they did was try to blame Sarah Palin and then me.  They even went so far as to blame a graphic on Sarah Palin's website that featured crosshairs. Without knowing anything that was the knee-jerk reaction.  And the same thing was happening here.
The other part of the agenda that was being advanced was, of course, gun control.  And there was glee, there was excitement at the opportunity that was presented here.  And I firmly believe that this is why so much of the initial reporting is wrong, is because it's all the result of a tainted universe in which these people live in the first place.  The things that they believe are wrong.  The things that guide them are incorrect.  About us, at least.  And so they start looking for evidence to prove what they feel, because what they are constantly doing is attempting to advance their political agenda.  And that is what's going on with this now.
So any attempt to report factually about it or to try to put it in any kind of perspective is going to be met with complete derision, criticism, mocking, and what have you. When in fact the real sickness in this can be found in the left-wing media.  Mark "Maxi" Shields, what did he say?  Mark Shields said that it is easier to get an assault rifle than it is to rent a car.  Now, that's not true.  It simply isn't true, but that kind of stuff is out there left and right, and, of course, your average low-information voter hears this, and starts thinking, "Wow, what a rotten country. What a rotten place, a horrible place."  It's just the sheer volume of incorrect data that is passed on.
John Hinderaker had a post at Power Line: "Desperate to profit by satisfying the public’s thirst for information about the Sandy Hook murders, news outlets -- just about all of them, as far as I can tell -- rushed to publicize 'facts' that turned out to be largely wrong. They reported that Ryan Lanza was a mass murderer, when in fact he is a respectable accountant who learned of the murders -- and his own alleged responsibility -- via CNN, while working in his office in Times Square. They reported that the killer’s younger brother was found in the woods after the murders, and was hauled out while protesting his innocence.
"Adam Lanza didn’t have a younger brother, and we have heard nothing further about this second person who supposedly had something to do with the killings. They told us that Nancy Lanza was a kindergarten teacher at Sandy Hook and was murdered in her classroom, along with her students. It turned out that she had no connection to Sandy Hook and was shot at home as she lay in her bed, likely asleep. They reported, entirely falsely, that Lanza had murdered his father in New Jersey. On fact after fact, the news media turned out to be wrong. Likely more errors will emerge over time."
And these people that are wrong, wrong, wrong, they are the primary news source for a vast majority of people in this country.  "The broader and more important question relates to the news media’s responsibility for Sandy Hook and similar incidents. As I wrote here, it seems rather obvious that mass murderers like Adam Lanza are inspired in part by a desire for fame, which our news media are happy to supply."

 Now, having said that, anyone notice any similarities between this and Benghazi? Was there a rush to judgement against Obama, based solely on what the media was reporting?

Although you know something was very wrong there, because I frankly find it very hard to believe that Hillary Clinton can't testify about Benghazi because she has a concussion!