Social Media or Newsmakers?

This article in ET caught my eye. It is interesting that this guy's FB post of Saravana Bhavan being bought over by Sun Group got noticed by a Bangalore based techie, Suseendran, as reported here by ET and journalists and finally led to an IT department raid.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-11-06/news/43733531_1_kalanithi-maran-tweet-journalists

I am not really a person for conspiracy theories, but do we now have newsmakers in Social Media, who randomly write random stories like this.

I am wondering, how much of news/updates that we see in Social Media are true? This leads to next question of, why do we have these so-called newsmakers or social rowdies in Social Media?

Is it for:

• Vengeance against the celebrities?
• Cheap thrill?
• First to break news, update friends?
• Gossiping, spread rumors?

Whatever be the reasons, this has led to many false news being spread which are far from truth – right from celebrities being pregnant to their marriages to their death.

Quite a many times, media picks up these news/updates, turns into news/articles and publishes it in newspapers next day. Is it because of lack of news or laziness and easy source to tap and create news?

After this, the concerned celebrity will have to defend his position, send more updates, etc, which again becomes news for Media.

In short, you create one news and that babies more news. Vicious circle!!

Do we need a fresh law to tackle this? Then, people will raise objections stating freedom of expression is curtailed. Question is, how much freedom is too much freedom?

Bottom line - do not trust a social media post blindly. Always verify, double-check its source and authenticity. Especially when it involves people, their families and their livelihoods.