Swedish paper falls for Thatcher death hoax
Published: 15 Aug 12 10:54 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/42624/20120815/
A Swedish news editor is blaming "bad fact-checking" after his paper announced on Tuesday that British ex Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had died - a story that began as a hoax on Twitter.
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“The article was only up for a short time, perhaps an hour at the most, but by then the damage was done,” explained the editor of the newspaper, Ronny Karlsson, to The Local.
The article, which erroneously announced that "Margret" Thatcher had died, was based on a tweet from Twitter account @OfficialSkyNews, which read:
“Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has passed away at the age of 86 after a prolonged illness. More details soon.”
This account, which boasted over 33,000 followers, has now been deleted after having been outed as a fake with no affiliation with Sky News.
With Swedish media now writing about the kerfuffle, Karlsson has blamed bad fact-checking for the article's publication.
“We simply didn’t check properly if it was true. Everything moves so fast these days. But no matter how fast things get or how many news channels there are, this shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Since, the paper has published an apology about the mix-up on their site, however the editor is quick to point out that this was a one-off occurrence.
“This was just someone making a mistake. We can only apologize to our readers – this is something that has happened for the first and the last time,” Karlsson told The Local.
Oliver Gee
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1-Legacy media no longer has the resourses to check sources let alone properly write and fact-check their own stories.
2- Traditional newspapers are shutting down in droves worldwide and as an option are doing on line aditions with "pay walls".Really great for the older generation without computers!
3-Twitter and the others are the new "news",take it or leave it,pick your poision.
Evolution,transformation and plain old economics-101(or 2.0 for the kids!)
Discuss...
Swedish #journalists#, especially the female ones,write articles without checking facts and then, when someone like me complains, they do not update the story or simply ignore the complains. One exception of the rule is Mrs. Lena Mellin from Aftonbladet.
http://www.isthatcherdeadyet.co.uk/
"Britan doesn't need Manufacturing. All its wealth can be generated in the City of London". M Thatcher.
Right............Now see where we are, Maggie.
There will be many in Britain who will celebrate her passing. Utinam que.