Twitter users “kill” celebrities off all the time, from Justin Beiber to the more recent Morgan Freeman, but those are just people messing around. What happens when it is a news powerhouse that generates the false information first?
On September 9, 2011, CBS learned just how fast word really travels on Twitter, when followers of @WhatsTrending were wrongly informed that Steve Jobs had died. The followers did not hesitate to share their disappointment in the news provider for their inaccuracies and lack of professionalism.
The tweet lived in the Twitter-sphere for mere minutes, but that is a lifetime in the constant world of social media.
The results of the mess up – for which both hackers and an intern had received blame for – were the removal of the tweet, the firing of What’s Trending host Shira Lazar, the removal of the program and all related content from CBS, and immediate apology tweets from the news sources and the former host. CBS also released a statement acknowledging What’s Trending as an unattached, outside news source who operated on their own.
In a bad situation, CBS responded in a most timely and professional manner, and should be looked to as an example for how to react to a blunder. Remove, Apologize, and React.Though they handled the mistake properly, the whole thing could have been avoided had @WhatsTrending simply sat on the story until a death had been confirmed through evidence.
In a society that is constantly updating its status globally, it is important for news organizations to be the first to release a story, since they now “compete” with millions of citizen journalists. While understanding this unfortuate position, due to their accountability as professionals, accuracy is better than speed.
A month later, CBS was among one of the first to report on the official passing of Steve Jobs, and today remains a top news source.
http://www.eonline.com/news/262939/cbs-news-apologizes-for-killing-off-steve-jobs-via-twitter
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cbs-news-ends-relationship-source-233725
Fake deaths and death rumors have been around for a long time, but twitter and social media have taken it to an entirely new level. The one I remember the most is the coverage of Joe Paterno in his final days. Many people in the news industry tweeted that the legend had died a day before he actually passed away. His family immediately issued a release saying that Paterno was still alive.
In the days of social media, especially twitter, speed is everything when it comes to online news. But, sometimes quality and integrity should come first instead of speed.
When Neil Armstrong passed away many tweeters were tweeting “RIP lead singer of Green Day.” It wasn’t for awhile that I figured out only Neil Armstrong passed away and not Billy Joe Armstrong as well. When alleged reliable sources give false information it loses trust among readers and Twitter accounts are not helping this cause. People will tweet wrong information all the time and since Twitter and Facebook are fairly real-time updates, they’re prominent sources of false facts.