How France's entire media spread false news for a night
Isabelle Roughol
Building news organisations where people love to work｜Journalist & media executive｜Public historian
Fascinating case study in France over the weekend. For less than a day, we thought that the most wanted man in the country had been caught in Scotland. It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. The so-called news was actually reported quite carefully at first on Friday night, but the language quickly slipped from conditional to categorical and therefore to misinformation through human error. (The more you repeat something, the truer it seems, and when you have to fill the air on a 24-hour news channel, you repeat it a lot.) What you have here is the tension between being first and being right, which has always been present in journalism and is more and more with 24-hour news channels, social media and the incredible economic pressure on news sites that are advertising-based and therefore click-based.
Nonetheless, major mistake. It will be interesting to hear more from newsrooms about the process. We've seen (lukewarm) apologies but not tons of lifting the curtain on the process, which would be great to see. A lot of newsrooms have said, "We checked with two or three other sources." What can happen is that those sources are police and they're all getting their information from the same place, so what you really have is one source (three different ways.) We'll see. That might have been what happened. It'll be really interesting to hear from media.
To err is human, we've all done it. In this profession, it can be quite grave so that transparency is fundamental.
Regional Director at FSIME Construction Dubai, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Narang Projects Qatar.
5 年@ cc be yZyu I x a bvj and c. ljx as can be. bkx, xx bm j
Interesting thread here. Media has always struggled with story over truth and there are many adjectives to hide behind: developing, alleged, rumoured, potential, suggested an so on. In a populist world no-one are allowed to be neutral. You are either for or against whatever issue is discussed. Social media gives everybody a megaphone and the cacophony of opinions and assumptions parading as facts is maddening. The psychology behind the focus on negative media is explained by Prospect Theory. This points out that people are more inclined to reject a potential position if there is a detection of a risk. In practice this means that people will be against things on principle if the are no direct personal benefit or value. Misery loves company and this shapes the tribal echo chambers online. I suspect that journalists and politicians often share the broken journey from idealism to moral compromises when money, power and corruption eats away at the soul. Yet without agreed truths we allow opinions to disguise facts and distort our reality. I saw someone online once say: ‘If what you say is a fact then I reject that fact!’ We’re doomed, Mr Mainwaring!
étudiant à Université Hassan II A?n Chock de Casablanca
5 年I dont understand
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5 年I would like to know how the media find out the news that they broadcast and do they write them
Oh My! That's a terrible mistake for sure. Would like to know how they ended up handling it. ??