Mainstream Media and the Age of Misinformation: The Case of RT’s Bank Accounts and Assange’s Non-Demise

There are a couple of stories in the international news circuit today that really paint a pretty picture of the circus that mainstream media has become. Let’s review.

Assange’s not-so-dead demise

First, the damn Assange story. Rumors broke on Twitter and spread like wildfire among users, due to three cryptic tweets on the official WikiLeaks account. The first to verify info and publish that Assange was “not dead” and offer an explanation of what the tweets might mean, i.e. not as cryptic as they may seem, was Gizmodo, within three hours of the tweets and rumors in question on Twitter. Other major media all remained silent, with traditional mainstream media only breaking stories on this in the past few hours, well over 12 hours since the WikiLeaks tweets and rumors.

Point: Traditional mainstream media needs to get their shit together and work faster on vetting and reporting breaking news, one way or another. Readers, as today’s new news creators need to be educated on basic standards of vetting and spreading news (rumors). The latter is, in fact, the job of the first. Journalism should be the primary and paramount source of informing and educating the public. It isn’t fulfilling its role and it desperately needs a complete overhaul.

BREAKING: RT uses network to make really loud customer complaint

The second “news” story is that of Russian government-owned and operated RT having its “accounts frozen by UK.” I see my friends sharing it on social networks and, frankly, I feel like bitchslapping every single one of you. But, I understand that British media fueled that fire, by misquoting RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan’s tweet in Russian that RT accounts in UK “are blocked.” Simonyan herself said in a later tweet that accounts were not actually blocked, but that they had received notice that service by their UK bank would be discontinued in December.

This is not a news story. At least not yet, until we have all the facts in. What it is — is a really loud customer complaint. As a PR professional, I’d recommend the bank in question not make any statements whatsoever regarding this matter, make sure their top executives aren’t seen with any UK government officials over the next 8 weeks or so, and wait for this news cycle to blow over. They always do, media sensationalism or no media sensationalism.

Let’s take (literally) three minutes to fact-check

This is simply not true. What seems to have happened, according to Simonyan, is that the UK bank whose services RT and RT executives have been using, has notified RT that they will be discontinuing such services as of December 12, 2016. The decision, according to the bank’s notification “is final” and no explanation is provided. Reading through Simonyan’s tweets and basic knowledge of Russian will confirm this.

A simple Google search will inform you that any UK bank seems to have the right to refuse or discontinue services at any time and with no explanation. This is a right that businesses often have in democratic free markets. Interestingly, building services also have these same rights in the UK. Good to know.

This would have been the most basic fact-checking available that any journalist should and must have employed. Maybe even give the bank’s HQ a call to clarify or get the bank’s official policy on this. Y’know, just for the sake of clarity and fucking informing the public before a shit storm claiming “media wars” between Russian and the UK have begun.

But instead of doing that, most UK media outlets, including the BBC (which wrote the damn book on fact checking and proper journalistic style!), used ‘bank accounts frozen’ in their headlines. Sure, they used a quote and elaborated toward the end of the articles. They also know full well that most people don’t read past the headline.

Mainstream media, get your shit together

Only a handful of media reported the story clearly and accurately, including the headlines. The first one to do so was RT itself. Because they get aid to at least pretend they’re objective and accurate, apparently something they’re good at. Their headline reads, “UK bank to close RT accounts, ‘long live freedom of speech!’ — editor-in-chief.” The URL to the piece, however, reads “rt-uk-accounts-blocked” so I doubt that was the original headline.

The Guardian also seems to have amended its headline for this story, from “russia-todays-uk-bank-accounts-frozen-says-editor” to “Russia Today’s UK bank accounts closed down, says editor.”

I did notice a good thing though. Apparently, all mainstream media I’ve run into during the search for these stories have finally understood that hyphens beat underscores in URLs on Google. Yay! This means their shitty, badly researched information will get to more audiences and faster. Can we start over now?