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We were sitting in on a panel on North Korea and the media when the rumors of Kim Jong Un’s assassination hit the newswires. Of course, the most interesting aspect of this story is not the news itself; there was absolutely no evidence at the time that Kim Jong Un was even in Beijing let alone assassinated. The interesting story is how the mainstream media feels compelled to juggle such rumors when they go viral. How much do we tease readers with the stories that are completely unsubstantiated? Is it more risky to play along or to risk missing the story if it by some slim chance happened to be true?
Adam Cathcart notes how the North Korean press has been having subtle fun with the issue. Max Fisher at the Atlantic also has a smart take. One little tidbit from Fisher shows how the media can get trapped by failure to perform even the most simple due diligence:
“Around 3 pm, as the rumor continued to swirl, a Twitter account called @BBCLiveNews tweeted "Confirmed breaking news. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un assassinated. Updates to follow." Within an hour, it had been retweeted by over 2000 people, reaching who knows how many thousands of users. The account, like its "breaking news," is obviously fake on the briefest inspection; it had only 52 followers when it first sent the phony alert, and its previous tweets are mostly harassing messages directed at someone named ‘Gary Glitter.’”
The Huffington Post actually has a pretty good chronology of the episode, but with breathy “Updates.” Updates on the rumor, that is.
One of our favorite lines comes from Isaac Stone Fish at Foreign Policy, citing—in good blogger fashion—one of his journalistic friends, Shaun Walker, the Moscow correspondent for the Independent:
"Possible that someone said he 'murdered an enormous family-sized bucket of fried chicken,' and something got lost in translation."
