As a consequence of the worldwide economic crisis, some companies have decided to start inventing some false news to catch the attention of the communication media. In this way, they achieve notoriety and free spaces in the contents of the media, without any need to invest in advertising.
The last big scandal related with this fact took place the 26th of October, when it was discovered that the telecommunications Swedish company Tele2 had prepare a faked meteorite strike in a farm of Latvia. As a consequence, the government of Latvia ordered to cordon the area with security and scientific forces. Because of this fact, the Swedish company will have to compensate to the Latvian government, and they even could lead to criminal charges. In addition, the interior minister said, “the Interior Ministry doesn’t want to do business with a firm that promotes itself at our expense”, as Financial Times newspaper says.
On the other hand, Tele2 announced that the intention of the campaign was to attract Worldwide media, as they intended to distract attention from the country’s economic crisis and give people something “creative and exciting” to talk about.
What should strike more is that these types of fake events are becoming more and more popular in the last months. For instance, we have another examples as the story of the balloon boy in the United States. It supposed the dedication of the media of all over the World, which looked at the situation with terror until when some days after the announcement the poor child appeared safe and sound in his own house. Finally, the mother of the boy, who just wanted the attention of the media, uncovered the hoax.
Another example took place in Spain in September, when another telecommunications company called Terra tried to capture the media with some manipulated videos about fishermen that stare absolutely scared the presence of several UFO. Terra declared then that they just wanted to pay tribute to “The War of the Worlds” of Orson Wells.
How should we interpret all these "news" in the media? Probably it is a mix of several factors: the need of interesting news which could attract more audience, a lack of dedication to verify the sources of the news and investment in investigative journalism, companies with no qualms of longing for the attention of media or the easy and fast way to spread rumours and frauds via Internet. The lesson of Orson Wells still lives in the 21st century.
It is really unaccepatable that things like these do happen...just to attract the media attention!!!
ReplyDeleteif anyone wants to read more about the story of "balloon boy": http://www.mns.co.uk/01219753.html
it is unbeleivable what people can do to attract the attention...and apparently fake stories sell more than the real ones...do we come to the question of propaganda??