Journalists should beware of all-too-frequent hoaxes and fake news circulating on Twitter, say the always-aggregating folks at BreakingNews.com.
Cory Bergman writes that the BreakingNews team finds “an increasing amount of fake Twitter photos and YouTube clips these days. I’m not talking about The Daily Show and The Onion, but semi-sophisticated efforts to dupe people during breaking stories.”
Journalists are especially vulnerable during big, developing news situations when they are urgently seeking the latest scoop by hunting or crowdsourcing on social networks — like Tuesday’s earthquake.
Howard Kurtz wrote after the quake that “much of the media has only one volume these days, and that is loud.” He was talking about the media’s tendency to fixate and sensationalize, not its accuracy. But that urge to sensationalize can drive journalists to find something sensational. And that’s where they become susceptible to hoaxes. “Too good to be true” becomes “too good not to publish.”
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