Canadian News Viewers Pull Fast One on News Stations
February 5, 2007
As reported by the Candian press, Candian broadcast news stations were showing the same clip of a ferry stuck in stormy seas of the Cabot Strait that was submitted by a viewer when it was found on Youtube, meanwhile, it turns out that the video clip was shot off the coast of New Zealand. Oops.
Despite what some people who have commented on this site may think, public-journalism, which at times can be accurate, more timely than regular news, and even more in depth if the person reporting experienced the news story, still can pose risks and give out false information.
Today’s media is desperately trying to connect with their viewers in order to maintain a continuing relationship in which the viewer will simply rely on them for their news, and try to do so by taking as much advice, criticism, and even information from these people. Though it seems like a good idea, they are incidentally risking the credibility of their news, such as proven by this very matter.
One problem with this particular instant was the news channels jumped all over the story without any detailed fact-checking in order to present the news in a timely manner, which only shows how the web and its ability to provide news in the quickest of ways is forcing broadcast stations to blindly present information in the hopes that it can draw viewers towards them by supplying the news quickly.
Citizen journalists are often not credible and because of this small, tiny incident, people canceled their bookings for ferries and ships and those comapnies lost money because of it, not to mention the news services will lose viewers respect and credibility for having made the mistake, and perhaps ironically sending more of their original viewers towards the internet instead because of the mistake. I guess from now on they’ll be a little more caful checking their facts.
