Reports of Lightfoot death greatly exaggerated
How well did social media and journalism perform when some twit reported that Canadian music icon Gordon Lightfoot had died? Not so well, says Dale Bass.
Thank god — Gordon Lightfoot’s still alive.
Was at work; the
boss came out, told me he’d read on the Internet Lightfoot had died. So
I went to Twitter — dumb move!!! — and sure enough, all the
#lightfoots were being RTed saying he was dead. So I Facebooked it, and
learned from another friend that the story had been pulled from the
Canwest sites. Should have gone to the Google news search to begin
with, I guess.
And the lesson here? One that somebody who’s
been a journalist since she was 18 and working on an Underwood should
have known. Anybody with a laptop and the nerve to do it can say
anything and have a lot of people believing it.
Update: Ok,
still checking Twitter, found an RT of an RT of a David Akin tweet where
he acknowledges some responsibility for the Mark Twaining of Lightfoot
in his blog.
