The nature of the Internet is that everything should be taken with a grain of salt. Fairly recently, people on my Facebook were reporting that Morgan Freeman had died. A quick Google search revealed that this was not the case. Before that, one of my friends posted that the actor who plays Glen on the Walking Dead was the same actor who portrayed Data in the Goonies. They don’t even look alike.
It’s one thing for your friends to post things on Facebook. You can’t expect them to thoroughly research everything before posting it. However, there’s a troubling trend with news outlets reporting something that turns out to be untrue without even a cursory verification.
Early this year, the Daily Mail reported that the smog was so heavy in Beijing that residents in Tiananmen Square had to watch the sunrise on a screen. The story was picked up all over the Internet, including by Huffington Post.
Yes, air pollution is very bad in China. No, residents do not have to watch the sunrise on a screen. The picture “proving” this fact was of a screen showing a tourism commercial. The sun was on the screen for fewer than ten seconds.
Last November, TV producer Elan Gale tweeted about a woman named Diane on his flight who berated airline employees, and the subsequent ways he plotted to terrorize her on the flight. He sent her snarky notes and alcohol, culminating with her slapping him when they got on the ground. This whole thing was made up. Think about it for a second: news outlets saw what some guy was writing on his Twitter, and reported it as fact. Buzzfeed is trying really hard right now to be seen as a legitimate news outlet, but stuff like this is not helping their case.
These two instances can be forgiven. It’s not all that out of the ordinary to see article after article about something and assume it must be true if it’s been so widely reported. Even in Gale’s case, there was a name to attach to the story, as well as pictures to go with it. It’s naïve to take it at face value, but understandable.
It’s quite another thing to start reporting as fact what some guy said on a message board.
In August, outlets from Gawker to Metro UK to the New York Daily News reported that a man had bought all the remaining pies in a Burger King to spite a child who was having a tantrum over wanting the pies. After seeing it in my newsfeed over and over, I decided to check out the story, and I couldn’t believe what I saw: it was based on a story some guy told on Reddit. It wasn’t something that was witnessed. It was something an anonymous person could be (and probably was) lying about. Redditors love what they perceive as “justice.” Some Redditors also are obsessed with “karma,” the fake Internet points users get if their posts are upvoted. Many Redditors also hate children who act up. This story is an obvious attempt to cash in on all those aspects of the site. Never mind that it’s highly unlikely the mother tried to run after the brave Redditor who bought all the pies (presumably to attack him). Never mind that the story supposedly took place two years ago and was just, for whatever reason, coming out now. Never mind that it’s a totally unsubstantiated story from an unknown source. News outlets took it and ran.
Is this what things have come to? Just reporting random stories from Reddit? The reporters don’t know if it’s true or not and they haven’t done their due diligence at all. I would never even think of reporting on some guy’s post on Reddit as if it were true.
In journalism school we’re told to do our best to present the facts, to question what we’re told, and to present the truth to our readers. If online outlets are just going to report on any old thing they read on the Internet, can they even be considered news outlets? And can they be trusted? If you can’t trust news outlets to do the work of presenting the facts, who can you trust to present the news?
Online outlets like Gawker, Huffington Post, and even Buzzfeed have been doing good work presenting news stories to the public. But they need to start doing the bare minimum of research before presenting lies as truth, and that means losing this notion that it’s okay to report one person’s story they read on a message board.
