Truth or Lie Can Still Disrupt

My mother works at the Ukrainian Bank in NYC. She recently told me that they had to pull a daily newspaper from their stands because there was an article that would have probably caused a rush on the bank to withdraw everyone’s money. The information in the article turned out to be wrong. Just think about it, an article with wrong details would have caused the collapse of a bank that’s been in business for decades. The article turns out to have been written by an elderly reporter who read something “official” online and decided to report about it. Unfortunately, this “official” website with these “official” documents was wrong and misleading.

The reason I’m writing about this is that it still amazes me how often people take what is written online as facts. I know my generation is very aware how much crap is out there on the web. I’m sure most of my parent’s generation has the same idea though it’s not as accepted. Unfortunately, this same idea hasn't really been understood by older people. It still amazes me that this stuff happens. Aren't these the people that grew up understanding that media is not all facts and stuff can be made up?

Another thing that bugs me is seeing articles from different websites that have the same exact wording as other articles. You can type a sentence in quotation marks sometimes and you will get multiple articles with the same exact words. Now correct me if I’m wrong but isn't the full blown plagiarism? It’s astounding how often this happens. It’s even funnier when someone reports “facts” that they got from a satire article by mistake. Shouldn't common sense tell you that something smells fishy?

It’s sad when you read these articles because it seems that no one has the brainpower to write their own articles with their own views and facts from reliable sources. It seems those days are gone. The internet provides immediate reporting so if you don’t stay ahead, you fall behind really fast. With so many media outlets, it’s no wonder things get repeated quite often.

Getting back on point regarding my story, it’s astounding how something so simple as a newspaper articles based on “facts” found online can have such a huge impact on businesses. Those articles would have led to the spread of the story by word of mouth and then problems would rapidly progress. The same exact things happen to all businesses now a day. If your company does something wrong and someone posts it or writes an article on it, the news can spread like wildfire. The company can go from number one on everyone’s list to number ten within days. News needs to be reported better so that disasters do not occur.