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citizen journalism is not: melbourne airport example

January 23, 2009 by Jonathan Nguyen · Comments 

timing could not have been more opportune, there was some debate after my posting on citizen journalism.

so here’s the problem with selling twitter as a mainstream news source: without fact checking it’s just one big rumour mill.

see what happens when jonoh tells the world that there is a fire on a plane today in melbourne. the “news” spreads like wildfire and the twemes go crazy when in fact jonoh was not even on the flight!

twitter is a brilliant medium, but we need to still apply some rules to make it credible as a news source.

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  • Mark
    @jonoh made it clear from the beginning he was not on the plane, all you had to do was do some fact checking yourself and read his tweets.

    Qantas had confirmed there was a problem with an engine of the plane on a Sydney > Melbourne flight around 7:30pm resulting in a small fire in the engine. Therefore @jonoh correct.
  • Actually I did, these are @JonoH's tweets:

    Breaking!!! Plane on fire @ melboune airport about 21 hours ago from TweetDeck
    Qantas 767 on fire @ Melbourne airport... details to come!!! about 21 hours ago from TweetDeck
    etc...
    Until this message when quizzed by @nickhodge a few hours later.
    I had a mate scheduled on a Mel-Syd flight who had alerted me 2 the situation. i was not on scene, please just wait 4 QF/media to announce. about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck

    Look, I'm glad that in the end the facts did get checked, but the bit that concerns me is this stuff spreading BEFORE the verification.

    I will update the post shortly to reflect this. Thanks for stopping by with your comments.
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