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Osama Bin Laden was captured in Cyberspace
Posted by Nimrod Kozlovski on Saturday, March 08 @ 00:43:09 EST News
Hoaxes and rumors flourish online and mix reality with fiction when trusted websites pick them up. A rumor spread online before president Bush’s news-conference yesterday claiming that Bush is going to declare that “Osama Bin-Laden was caught by the American forces”. The rumor made its way to the Jerusalem Post’s website which reported : “according to the radio reports in Israel, President Bush is going to announce the capture of Bin Laden”. The report seemed to rely on a credible report by the Israeli press. The Jerusalem Post’s report was picked up by major media outlets including the BBC and the Drugereport which also linked to the Jerusalem Post’s website. In minutes the Internet was swamped with reports about the capture of Bin Laden. In the chain of report the name of the source disappeared and the rumor gained life of its own relying on the trustworthiness of the publishing websites. What this story can teach us about online journalism? Probably that when news websites compete in real time on exclusive reporting, the fact-checking process is not done in due diligence. Traditional media pick up too easily on unchecked rumors and by cross-linking to trustworthy outlets stories gain credibility in the public eyes. For the time being, Osame is only captured online.
 
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Re: Osama Bin Laden was captured in Cyberspace (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 11 @ 13:03:58 EST
I wonder how this ties into how the big media companies claim that blogging doesn't 'check their stories' before they post.

Often times, they don't have political agendas as well, so they'll post exactly what they saw, and not what they're told that they saw.


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