Michael Jackson Dead. Britney Spears Not Dead – the Reporting Power of Social Media

One of the major arguments put forth by the big newspaper companies is that if we stop paying them huge sums of money then we will no longer get trusted, vetted and researched news – that so-called “citizen jouralists” just can’t be trusted since we aren’t paying them for their work.

It was interesting to see, last week, that the very first place I saw word of Michael Jackson’s death was on Twitter.  I immediately went over to CNN.com to see what they were saying but they were still talking about Michael Jackson being in a coma.  In fact, it was literally more than two hours after I’d seen multiple confirmations of his death on Twitter, that any of the major news organizations would report the information.  I think that TMZ.com is actually being credited as the first “official” confirmation.  Now , if that isn’t a smack in the face to the so-called professionals…

Meanwhile. this sad death, and that of Farrah Fawcette, led to a slew of fake death reports.  What I found fascinating here was that the same loose network of minds that had confirmed Michael Jackson’s death worked just as quickly to confirm that, in fact, Britney Spears, was still alive even though someone hacked her Twitter stream and annoucned “Britney Spears has died.”  Twitter users also speedily debunked the fake deaths of Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldbloom.

Now, all that is left for the pro’s is to endless rehash all of this while those of us on the bleeding edge are on to the next breaking story.

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1. Michael Jackson Dead. Britney Spears Not Dead – the Reporting Power of Social Media « Michael Jackson Is Dead : StarLogz.com — June 29, 2009 @ 8:12 am

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