December 1, 2015
by Dafyd Martindale
If ever our region was given a wake-up call about social media, it happened today.
A woman in Nanango posted on Facebook that three people had died at the 7 Mile Diggings in Saturday’s storm.
Why? Because she’d heard this was so.
But like most rumours, the story had no basis in fact.
All the same, it was quickly reposted around Facebook. And soon afterwards it was picked up by Higgins Storm Chasing when it was shared to their Facebook wall.
Higgins liked the post so much that operator Jeff Higgins reposted it under his own name to add his voice to the chorus of “sympathy”.
What he didn’t do was take a minute to call anyone – Police Media, Nanango Police, SES, QAS, Ergon Energy – to see if it was true.
And since Jeff’s Facebook page has more than 460,000 followers, the story went ballistic soon after that.
The result?
Police and media were deluged with calls.
It was even rumoured Brisbane media were despatching helicopters to cover what they thought was breaking news.
But it quickly emerged the story was a hoax after real journalists spoke to local authorities.
However, when our editor posted this information to Higgins Storm Chasers, they deleted the post.
It was only later in the morning when other groups – including Nanango Police – tried to contact Higgins with similar advice that Jeff Higgins finally picked up a phone himself.
About an hour later, a red-faced Mr Higgins had to publicly admit he got things wrong.
Very, very wrong.
In his apology Mr Higgins tried to deflect blame by saying “we have trusted information from a public source without investigating with local and state authority” (sic).
That, at least, is true.
But it would have been far better had HSC done this beforehand – not afterwards.
By spreading the hoax so widely without checking the facts, Mr Higgins is not worthy of any sympathy.
Instead, he deserves any criticism he gets for putting his desire for clicks ahead of his social duty of care to check claims about serious matters carefully before publishing them.
What is even more disturbing, though, is that some members of the public seem to put more trust in a page that reports weather events than they do in the actual agencies that are in charge of these things, like the police, or reporters who have spoken to them.
And they claim Jeff Higgins should be absolved of responsibility for all the grief he has caused because “we all make mistakes”.
There have also been calls for us to apologise to Jeff Higgins.
We won’t be.
So, what should be the consequences of publishing something on Facebook that produces so much public damage?
We’ll leave that to the people who feel angry, hurt and betrayed over this matter to form an opinion.
The real lesson in this, we think, is that Facebook – and all other “social media” – are not true media at all.
They are places where many people amuse themselves posting inspirational quotes, photos of themselves and their cats, and their thoughts on the issues of the day.
And more and more often, they are also places where people post rumours, half-thought out babble and downright lies … sometimes because they’re misled, sometimes because they’re stupid, and sometimes because they’re malicious.
So if you’re forming your opinions of the world off social media, it pays to be aware that you are frequently getting a very ignorant, ill-informed and deeply inaccurate view of things that – as Jeff Higgins discovered today – will come back to bite you with a vengeance sooner or later.
And if you see something on Facebook that bothers you, the safest approach is to assume it isn’t true and research it in that much bigger world that Facebook lives in called the Internet before sharing …
A few minutes spent with Google will usually unearth the truth about almost anything.
And – perhaps no surprise – when it comes to important news, you’ll usually find the facts in genuine news organisations staffed by professional journalists.
Not on Facebook.
- Related article: No Charges Likely After Facebook Fiasco
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Lucky this sort of incident hasn’t happened before.
Thank you for calling this page out. With reach comes responsibility and accountability something that has been lacking for a long time and as it grows so does the concern of the lack of accurate information across the board. This article has voiced the concerns of many people. Thank you.
Bloody brilliant write up! The unfortunate thing is he has such a huge following it’s like a cult, and yes they don’t expect him to apologise, it’s everyone else who has to apologise to him. This article won’t damage or harm him, it will only make him stronger with his followers.
Publishing stories without verifying your sources is not a practice limited to only social media. There have been plenty of cases where the mainstream media have been duped in to publishing material that is false or untrue (check out the background of the movie Truth for a classic example).
I’m not a big fan of Higgins Storm Chasing but I find his site can be informative as long as you understand the nature of the information you’re receiving.
In fact many people turn to the social media more today for information because they no longer trust the capacity of the mainstream media to properly or fully report anything unless being paid by special interests to do so.
Who in their right mind would delete a message from a reputable editor to warn it was a hoax? About time something was written so well like your editorial here! What is written is so true and well overdue! So many people in the community have been affected by this “mistake”.
Higgins do some great work with their weather reporting, but all one can do is ask why believe an unverified report and post it to such a huge following? I’m sure they will move on from this and not repeat the same mistake again. Nobody is perfect after all. Their forecasts tend to be spot on for the most part.
Unfortunately, I have seen many pages on various topics on Facebook resorting to sensationalism to get more clicks. Just a general observation not aimed at one page in particular. To keep it somewhat relevant to the above story, you’ve got chasers the world over who excitedly post warnings of supercells with remarks like “[name of town] is in for some action today :)”, which gets hundreds/thousands of likes. They even more excitedly jump into their vehicles to take those closeup epic shots and post them as well as report the breaking news as it unfolds. Then, once all hell breaks loose and houses are damaged, those same chasers send out their sympathy to those affected.
Of course, nobody wants people’s lives to be turned upside down, but why get excited about the prospect of a potentially devastating storm to begin with? I don’t get it. Then you have those who ask people to be safe and not venture outside during storms (which is a very good thing) and then they post/share pics that were obviously taken outside in dangerous conditions. Again, why make community announcements if you are going to post those risky shots and congratulate people on how great that pic is?
CJ, I respect your viewpoint on the matter of storm chasing but let me clarify something for you. Storm chasers are not just out there for the thrill, the adrenalin, many of them are out there to report phenomenon to the BoM so that they may better warn people in the storm’s path. If it weren’t for chasers in the US, there would be far less tornado warnings and far more people injured or killed. Storms are unavoidable and there is nothing that can be done to stop them, so it’s best we have chasers out there to help get warnings out to people. Not only that, but Mother Nature produces some amazing things, storms are definitely one of them. It’s no different to people who photograph volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, cyclones, or any other natural disaster. They can’t be stopped, but the images and videos we take of these disasters can help us better understand their impact on humans.
CJ, I agree completely. It is an unfortunate truth that far too many people seem to jump at the chance to turn tragedies into a headline only to reap the ratings/attention of as many people as they can, much like every time there is a major cyclone or natural disaster all the breakfast TV shows send their stooges to cover it live, not out of care or a need to report the news but for ratings, very similar to Karl from Today going to Paris after the terrorist attacks (a news reporter I could understand, but a breakfast TV host?). Everyone seems so fast to make the most out of a tragedy and be the first to report it that often the facts and verifications are placed further down the list of priorities.