Twitter kills Patrick Swayze. Will it kill again?
At 11:24 a.m. today, this Twitter message went out on an account with over 410,000 followers:
Patrick Swayze was alive, but the false report of his death was “retweeted” by thousands of users until, 50 minutes later, @BreakingNews knocked down its own report:
“JUST IN — A representative for Patrick Swayze tells People Magazine that the actor is still alive.”
This mistake was as predictable as it is unacceptable. As I wrote last month in a post about swine flu: “There’s the risk that an URGENT story that’s totally false could gain a lot of traction very quickly on Twitter.” And I singled out @BreakingNews as the “worst offender.” I hope they learn from this debacle and get better at simple reporting.
The death of an actor isn’t something that could cause a panic, but this was a 100% false news report of significance, and it spread very fast. Watch for more of this!