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.
In this case, traditional media in all its experience didn’t know that social media sources can be a minefield, and it exploded in their faces. Had the “joke” not been discovered sooner or the fake quotes more inflammatory, this could have had serious political implications.
