September 24 - False text messages circulate in Hong Kong urging Bank of East Asia customers to withdraw their funds as the bank was allegedly in trouble because of its association with Lehman Brothers. These are followed up with posts to a local discussion board, and lead to a run on funds that saw around HK$2 billion in withdrawls. The police are investigating and have made arrests. In this case, the message was quickly circulated and fed on people's insecurity. As it was passed on from friend to friend, the message gained credibility. SMS has a long history of being used in Hong Kong as an enabler of social movements and social change but in this case the motives were clearly malicious.
October 3 - A false news story is posted to CNN's citizen journalism site, iReport, stating that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. Though Apple was quick to deny the report, it spread throughout the blogosphere and led to a drop in shares to an 18 month low. Apple's prompt denial saw the shares bounce back quickly. The SEC is now looking into the source of the post. The fact that iReport / CNN makes no guarantees about content seems to have made little difference to those who reacted to the 'news'.
So...what to do? Are these the veritable tips of the iceberg of a social media backlash? Are the tools that have liberated the exchange of ideas and news failing us? I say no to both. These are examples of how technology has empowered the rumour mill. In neither case, was there an editor at play who vetted the accuracy of the statements. People accepted them on face value, and acted based on the assumption that the stories were factual.
In this age of authenticity, we need to challenge both the good and the bad. While we have access to more information, it doesn't mean the information is necessarily accurate. Good journalism will never be replaced by someone in a garage with a web connection or mobile phone and a chip on their shoulder. Similarly, editing - be it from someone who holds the editor's title, or the self filters in an information consumer's head - is more important than ever.
- Jeremy
3 comments:
People need to start considering their responsibilities when using social media tools. It can land you in hot water if you're not careful.
I've written another post on my thoughts in this area -
http://pradvocate.blogspot.com/2008/10/ugly-side-of-social-media.html
When we couple that with the errors in the so called mainstream media (no I am not talking about CNN. I am thinking of the local Hong Kong newspapers), we actually see a worrying trend -- the media, be they "traditional" or "new", are also being overwhelmed by the amount and speed of news materials and cannot upkeep the standard of quality of reporting. There is an equally alarming trend of the readers, be they on or off line, being not critical enough.
We used to say that APAC journalists wrote four times as much copy as their NA counterparts. Perhaps fundamentals such as fact checking and attention to detail are compromised when facing a global news cycle and a readership that has an almost infinite number of news sources. I guess the question is, will quality reporting prevail? Or is the global audience less discerning? Just as the concept of 'friends' has been changed by the MySpace and facebook generation, has the concept of 'journalist' also altered? Can old world journalistic standards survive when even the great traditional news outlets are cutting staff as advertising spend declines? More fundamentally, how can already time poor APAC journalists compete? Perhaps the answer is a deep dive into local reporting? I recall a meeting with a senior Bloomberg journalist who said that no-one is going to make a multi-million dollar share trade on the back of a blog post. This was in April 2007. Perhaps times have changed...
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