On Thursday CNN ran a story about imported shrimp from Thailand that was really just a rehash of an old AFL-CIO report about suspected labor abuses. There was nothing new about the report or about the package CNN produced so the first question is, where is the new in this news?

But the story doesn’t end there. You see, the reporter and producer who put the piece together did a rather shabby job of a number of thing: #1 getting all sides of the story, #2 understanding that the story had progressed past the year-and-a-half old press release handed out by a labor union and #3 using sound bites in context.

It’s #3 that makes things interesting. In the original piece an important-looking State Department Official says, “Bodies wash up routinely on the shores of Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, where they have been tossed overboard. And usually it’s for asking for a fair wage, talking back to the boss, asking to be taken back to shore.”

It’s a shocking tale for sure that really makes the story. Here we have a high ranking so and so confirming for us on-camera our worse fears in graphic detail. The problem is the CNN producers were apparently blinded by an it-bleeds-it-leads mentality when they chose this sound bite because they didn’t really listen to his words, they heard what they wanted to hear and that was enough. You see the story was about imported shrimp from places like Thailand and somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-plus percent of shrimp from Thailand is farmed and nearly all the shrimp imported to the U.S. from there is farmed. That’s right-for the most part there are no boats to throw workers off of because they don’t work on boats, they work on farms. So, while it’s a juicy story it’s not germane to report at hand. If you were never on board how can you be thrown over board?

I won’t get into all of the details but we brought this point and others to the attention of CNN’s editorial director and Executive producer and rather than becoming defensive and accusatory they… wait for it… agreed with us. The story has been reedited and sensational tales of abuses that don’t relate to shrimp farming in any way have been removed from the piece.

While we don’t agree with the way CNN went about producing aspects of this (old)news story we do agree with its interest in getting the story right and its willingness to go back and correct its mistakes. While we wish they hadn’t made those mistakes in the first place we are also pleased that they did the right thing.

Many times I have seen newsrooms that fouled up a story circle the wagons and fight rather than working to correct the record. CNN, under editorial director Richard Griffiths, has proven itself once again an outfit that wants to get the story right and puts in the extra effort to fix things when it does not.