The news that the French President and his First Lady are having affairs is certainly not a revelation in France where ‘cinq á sept’ is regarded as normal as a glass of red with lunch or a game of boules, but what is fascinating is how the story came into the public domain and why companies should be concerned.
Two posts on Twitter three minutes apart were the foundation for the ensuing media interest in Mr and Mrs Sarkozy. But is it right that such unfounded and scurrilous allegations can gain so much credibility and media attention?
Was it the case that the Tweets provided the excuse to print, rather than the evidence to substantiate rumours ? Or is the real story Twitter’s power and not Sarkozy’s alleged affair? Either way, the media has a responsibility to investigate a story before printing.
Pre-Twitter, such allegations did the rounds and either gained traction through verification from sources close to the story or were dismissed as unfounded. But with Twitter there is an immediate outlet for an individual’s views to be aired without retribution. Is it wrong, or simply inevitable, that it is used for vengeance and for the media to feed this vengeance with airtime?
In an era of instant news and gratification, reporting the news first and worrying about the facts later seems to be the order of the day
I am surprised how much faith journalists place in Tweets and blogs without appearing to worry whether the information is true. We had a recent client situation where unfounded and malicious comments were made on the internet and given national prominence by a business reporter without seeking to verify any of the information, it simply fitted with the angle of his story.
In an era of instant news and gratification, reporting the news first and worrying about the facts later seems to be the order of the day. This has to change as information overall means that we all have to be more discerning which outlets we source for news and this should mean that quality journalism will win out over haste.
The key issue for companies is that you cannot ignore what is being said online and you must have a strategy to deal with news, true or false, to protect your reputation.
You could just as easily be reading about a financial services company as a President’s love life so it would be naive to think it can’t happen to a corporate.
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