Small Fish, Big Pond

If you still get your news from 24 hour news stations, you need to stop.
River drill shakes up DC on 9/11 anniversary

But the exercise, involving speeding boats and at least one helicopter, probably would have passed unnoticed except that two TV networks confused simulated chatter over a Coast Guard radio for actual events and reported that the Coast Guard had opened fire on a suspicious vessel near ceremonies attended by President Barack Obama.

Here’s the simple version:
The Coast Guard was running a routine practice drill.
CNN and the news media overheard the drill while eavesdropping on scanners.
Rather than verify what was going on and providing proper journalism they jumped to conclusions and claimed that a possible attack was happening.
Other equally lax organizations copied the erroneous news creating a false mass hysteria.

The best way to deal with this is boycott Cable News stations. I’m sure you’ve already noticed they don’t really provide you with anything of use. They blow small things out of proportion and make things that shouldn’t be a problem into an actually problem.