Pitfalls of using social media for reporting
January 19, 2008
Several big news companies — including London’s Telegraph and Agence France Presse — lifted quotes about Islam from the Facebook profile of the son of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, after she was assassinated. The only problem was, as MediaShift reports, the profile was fake. Read more »
AC/DC study fools newspaper, Freakonomics author
September 28, 2007
Another cautionary tale about not believing everything you read on the Internet: The Sydney Morning Herald, in a double-bylined story, reported a joke study that had been posted online — as did amed Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt in The New York Times.
The study claimed to examine how the songs of two different AC/DC frontmen influence decision-making.
Details here.
‘Most E-Mailed’ List Tearing New York Times’ Newsroom Apart
September 22, 2007
The New York Times most-emailed list “is destroying morale and escalating tensions among the once-dignified and professional Times staff,” the Onion reports.
Sure, it’s The Onion making people laugh, but it has a scaring ring of truth to it — reporters and editors are paying close attention to what’s making the list (which is not a bad thing).
“Your reputation is everything here at the Times, and if you want get known, you’ve got to deliver what readers want: differences between men and women, and photos of cats,” national political reporter Adam Nagourney “said”. “I suppose I could be most e-mailed, too, if I sat in front of my computer all day making up cutesy names for government officials, like some redheaded Wednesday and Saturday columnists I know.”
TMZ.com apologizes for posting bogus Judge Ito video
September 19, 2007
TMZ.com posted a video of “Judge Lance Ito” declaring OJ Simpson “guilty as sin” of the crimes he’s accused of in Las Vegas — but it turned out the video wasn’t Ito, The LA Times reports. The site has apologized for what it calls “a stupid mistake.”
(via Romenesko)
Killed LA Times column ends up online
July 31, 2007
After Los Angeles Times editors killed a column, it ended up on a local website, L.A. Observed.
The story was visited more than 18,000 times, and “many thousands” more subscribers had it sent to them electronically, Roderick said.
“A killed story used to be pretty much dead unless it got leaked to another newspaper,” Roderick said. “It’s very hard to keep secrets in a newsroom anymore.”
“They’re in the business of killing stories these days, not publishing them,” Steven den Beste, one of the Net’s first bloggers, wrote on Instapundit.com. “But they no longer have the ability to close the gate because thousands of bloggers have dug tunnels under the fence.”
Web site error rocks global oil markets
May 30, 2007
An error on the web site of TV station in Tulsa, Oklahoma, caused a spike in world oil prices today.
CBS affiliate KOTV reported that a lightning strike had caused a fire at an Oklahoma refinery — sparking a flurry of excitement among energy traders and boosting U.S. crude prices 40 cents, according to Reuters. The refining company announced the story was “completely wrong” and the station withdrew the story.
“All it takes is a screw-up on a Web site to move the market. It just goes to show how tense this market is,” said a Houston-based oil trader.
Sinbad, Wikipedia and premature obituaries
March 18, 2007
Sinbad has been added to Wikipedia’s list of premature obituaries after a vandal wrote that he had died.
TV news stations air incorrectly identified ferry video from YouTube
February 5, 2007
A number of Canadian television news broadcasts aired a user-submitted video clip falsely labelled as a ferry battling rough seas in the Cabot Strait, reviving questions about how news organizations handle user-submitted content. The reports prompted some passengers to cancel their bookings.
Newspaper sites criticized for publishing inappropriate comments
January 7, 2007
A number of newspaper sites that allow readers to post comments on news stories are getting criticized for allowing coarse and inappropriate comments on their sites, causing at least one to reconsider the feature.
Fake News Story Games Thousands of Digg Users
November 21, 2006
Steve Rubel points to a fake Reuters news story that fooled hundreds of Digg users and many more readers. The story alleges that Sony is recalling its brand new Sony Playstation 3 console. You can read how it was done here.