Fellow PR blogger Simon Collister just highlighted an interesting incident in the blogosphere yesterday - http://simoncollister.typepad.com/simonsays/2007/03/recess_monkey_c.html . A left wing political blogger Alex Hilton had been 'tipped off' by a reliable journalist source that former British PM Maggie Thatcher was dead and immediately rushed out a post with the 'scoop' - http://www.recessmonkey.com/2007/03/05/stop-press-maggie-dead/. Of course it was not true and Alex, having discovered the prank, posted an apology saying that he rushed it out before going to bed.
Alex has come in for a lot of criticism about how he handled the whole thing but one thing that was highlighted is that this blogger was trying to be a news source. I am all for 'people publishing' but can blogs really be credible news sources? I thought that blogging was all about giving your opinion on news and issues that are important to you..not actually delivering the news.
That said, it is a great story and hats off to Simon for picking it up, however I am suspicious that maybe Alex wasn't that naive in not checking the tip off for its veracity..maybe, just maybe, it was a cynical attemt to get more traffic to his site. If the intention was to stir up a hornets nest he has done just that but looking at the comments on his blog he may have turned more people off than on..
I do think bloggers can break stories and be a source of news.... however, in order to be seen as sources of news they need to be credible and unfortunately doing what Alex did doesn't help with that!
Posted by: Simon | March 06, 2007 at 02:18 PM