Is social media the best source for breaking news?

Last night, in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, another well-known name started trending on twitter, that of American actor Jeff Goldblum.

Thousands of tweets pinged back and forth with many suggesting that Goldblum had died in a tragic fall whilst filming a movie in New Zealand.  Australian Channel 9 news even reported his ‘death’.

So persistent were the rumours that fellow actor Kevin Spacey called to check with him manager after which he wrote on his twitter page: 'Jeff Goldblum is alive and well. I just spoke to his manager. Stop these stupid rumors.'




Goldblum wasn’t the only celebrity hit by a similar web hoax last night – Harrison Ford was also rumoured to have died.

In the UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband appeared to have tweeted his thoughts about Jackson’s death, apparently writing: 'Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael'.

This quote was repeated on Sky news and on various online sources, but was later found to be from someone purporting to be the Cabinet Minister.

For sheer speed and regular updates I do tend to turn to the internet and social media for breaking news nowadays, rather than television.

It was Entertainment website TMZ.com that broke the news of Jackson’s death, whilst broadcast outlets like the LA Times and CNN waited for confirmation from official sources.

But whilst speed is great, does it reduce the reliability of the information provided?

Ok, so TMZ.com got it right, and many news stories over the last year have broken on twitter first, but there have also been many mistakes and pranks like the Goldblum hoax. Patrick Swayze, for one, has been ‘killed off’ by social media several times despite still being alive and kicking.

In the rush to get the best social media sourced breaking news stories the traditional media seems to be taking a lot of what they find at face value.

For example The Mirror reported online that Phil Spector had been using Twitter to complain about having his wig confiscated in jail.

It was a great story, but discovered to be a hoax after the person behind the fake Phil Spector account owned up.


However the Mirror story stayed online uncorrected; I wonder just how many Mirror readers still think the story was true?

I can’t help but think that the masses of hoaxes that travel through the social web will only serve to discredit the social web as a valid and accurate source of breaking news.

Thinking back to working in a newsroom, the initial information we would receive on breaking news was often inaccurate - things like number of casualties, exact causes of death etc.

But the difference was we’d have time to send corrections to the national news desks before the story was published.

With speed being of the essence in the social web can we excuse these inaccuracies or should normal fact-checking apply?  Should quality of news be compromised by the speed of delivery? Is it only the
hoaxers that discredit news sourced from the social web?

I’m really interested to know other people’s thoughts on all this, so if you have a minute please respond to my poll and share your thoughts in the comments section.