Should Police Scanners Be Public?

Several innocent people have been accused of being responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing thanks to misinformation originating from police scanners. Why are these even broadcast? The past week has seen a torrent of information, the majority inaccurate, gushing from the faucets of Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and cable news and tabloids and blog posts. The story has become not so much what happened as what didn't happen; as BuzzFeed notes, the most valuable service a respectable publicati...