Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Social Media Case 3

Tom Petty’s ‘Death’ and Death

You hear all the time through different forms of media different celebrities have passed away. Most of these are fake, and you do not really put a lot of belief into these claims because it happens so often. But when a media source you feel you can trust reports on someone’s death you are much more likely to believe it. They are the experts, they are the ones giving out real news, they would know, right? So to have a popular news source you would think to be trustworthy such as CBS gives false information, it makes you wonder what went wrong.

Initially I do not view TMZ as a reliable news source, because I think of them as the source that creates the false news stories in order to get attention. I do not follow them, so I do not think of them as a reliable source. I would think that CBS is a reliable source, because they have a better reputation than TMZ. Maybe because the LAPD had tweeted about his death, and since they should be a reliable source as well, they did not feel the need to double check with any more sources. What I would like to know is why the LAPD released a statement in the first place if, as they later stated, they had no investigative role.

It is interesting to me that a news source that I would not normally deem reliable was the one on top of the story the whole time, while other more reliable sources were giving out the wrong information. I wonder if it has become more important to be the first to put out the stories, than it is to make sure your stories are correct. It seems a little insensitive to the family that were going through the trauma of losing Tom Petty, to have these big names like The Rolling Stones and CBS all stating that he was gone. 




No comments:

Post a Comment