Only last week, Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow was forced to apologise for regurgitating what appeared to be ‘news’ on Twitter that Piers Morgan had been suspended from his CNN show. It transpired that the tweet had been sent from a fake Twitter account and wasn’t actually true.
But this wasn’t the first, nor will it be the last, case of online Chinese whispers.
A few months ago, a tweet about a photo shoot taking place in central London raised the alarm that there was an actual gun man on the loose.
Stylist and fashion writer @candicebailey tweeted: “Street style shooting in Oxford Circus for ASOS and Diet Coke. Let me know if you’re around!!” Within a matter of minutes, Twitter was in a whirlwind of panic of this ‘shooting’ and people were reportedly told to stay indoors. And to make matters worse, all of this Twitter action was taking place at the same time a police training email, looking at a hypothetical gunman situation, was accidently leaked.
You can see how easy it is for gossip and rumours to spread on Twitter. I’ve got to admit that I once had my wrists slapped for tweeting something about someone which wasn’t technically quite correct…luckily there were no hard feelings though (after I grovelled for forgiveness , that is).
It’s just that the ‘retweet’ button is so easy to press! And then if you quote someone else talking about a story, it’s easy to edit it down so that it’s not revealing the whole story (we've only got 140 characters!!).
What’s more, there is a real feeling on Twitter and other social media channels that you’ve got to be the first person to know when something happens. Were you the first person in the world ever to find out that NOTW had shut down? Of course you were...you and a few thousand other Twitter users. There is an urge on social media to pass ‘news’ on as quickly as possible, to get it while it’s hot, a real life game of hot potato.
But where does the responsibility lie? Should people tweeting take more care to check their facts are straight before broadcasting them to the world? Or should it be up to the people reading tweets to take everything with a pinch of salt and not take every tweet as gospel?
I think this Reuters blog by Felix Salmon sums up the whole issue very well:
“Twitter is more like a newsroom than a newspaper: it’s where you see news take shape. Rumors appear and die; stories come into focul people talk about what’s true and what’s false.”
What do you think? Should we all practise more caution when our curser hovers over that retweet button in the future?
No comments:
Post a Comment