A recent article published by the Huffington Post featured interviews with a group of Westminster tweeters, some of whom claim to be plugged in to the inner sanctum of the Tory party.
The anonymous tweeters remained under the cover of their pseudonym and it fell upon the reader to trust they were who the journalists said they were. Sadly, it seems the Huffington Post skimped on the necessary fact checking to reward such trust.
Among those interviewed by the Huffington Post was a character calling himself @Lord_Credo on Twitter who it has been claimed is a troubled fantasist who duped just enough people to gather some momentum and second-hand validation among online politics watchers.
Huffington Post
Whatever the truth, the Huffington Post certainly has not responded to these suggestions that @Lord_Credo is a fraud with a strong defence of its fact checking. As a result its piece now makes for fairly painful reading, given a number of questions are based on apparent statements of fact such as "You were involved in government at a high level until fairly recently..." But the quote from @Lord_Credo which may haunt the journalists responsible the longest is this:
"I think the media are doing their job as best they can with the limited amount of information they can use about what happens behind the scenes..."
It's quite clear now these journalists could easily have done a much better job with the limited amount of information they had about @Lord_Credo.
Of course, this isn't the first time journalists have fallen foul of what's said on Twitter. Nor will it be the last. In 2010 the Daily Mail fell spectacularly for a fake Twitter account set up to spoof Apple founder Steve Jobs.
Calling Dan Rather! Calling Dan Rather! Another spuriously-sourced indefensibly-propagated media hoax you can allege is actually TRUE, although the evidence indicates otherwise!
Posted by: therealguyfaux | Aug 22, 2011 at 16:38