{"id":128677,"date":"2015-12-01T15:55:42","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T05:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=128677"},"modified":"2020-06-30T09:41:58","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T23:41:58","slug":"it-must-be-real-i-saw-it-on-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2015\/12\/01\/it-must-be-real-i-saw-it-on-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"It Must Be Real, I Saw It On Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>December 1, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Dafyd Martindale<\/strong><\/p>\n

If ever our region was given a wake-up call about social media, it happened today.<\/p>\n

A woman in Nanango posted on Facebook that three people had died at the 7 Mile Diggings in Saturday’s storm.<\/p>\n

Why? Because she’d heard this was so.<\/p>\n

But like most rumours, the story had no basis in fact.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And since Jeff’s Facebook page has more than 460,000 followers, the story went ballistic soon after that.<\/p>\n

The result?<\/p>\n

Police and media were deluged with calls.<\/p>\n

It was even rumoured Brisbane media were despatching helicopters to cover what they thought was breaking news.<\/p>\n

But it quickly emerged the story was a hoax after real journalists spoke to local authorities.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, when our editor posted this information to Higgins Storm Chasers, they deleted the post.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

About an hour later, a red-faced Mr Higgins had to publicly admit he got things wrong.<\/p>\n

Very, very wrong.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

That, at least, is true.<\/p>\n

But it would have been far better had HSC done this beforehand – not afterwards.<\/p>\n

By spreading the hoax so widely without checking the facts, Mr Higgins is not worthy of any sympathy.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And they claim Jeff Higgins should be absolved of responsibility for all the grief he has caused because “we all make mistakes”.<\/p>\n

There have also been calls for us to apologise to Jeff Higgins.<\/p>\n

We won’t be.<\/p>\n

So, what should be the consequences of publishing something on Facebook that produces so much public damage?<\/p>\n

We’ll leave that to the people who feel angry, hurt and betrayed over this matter to form an opinion.<\/p>\n

The real lesson in this, we think, is that Facebook – and all other “social media” – are not true media at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 …<\/p>\n

A few minutes spent with Google will usually unearth the truth about almost anything.<\/p>\n

And – perhaps no surprise – when it comes to important news, you’ll usually find the facts in genuine news organisations staffed by professional journalists.<\/p>\n

Not on Facebook.<\/p>\n