Stop killing people on social media

So many of us are hooked on to social media. We eagerly await the next update on some burning issue. We are aching to feed our network! We are part of the trigger-happy forwarders. We forward stuff even before we read them through!

So many of us want to be reporters. We have ‘channels’ to run. These are WhatsApp or Telegram groups consisting of family and friends. We feed them ferociously. Then there’s Facebook and Instagram.

So many of us are dying to to be reporters, but we don’t want assume the responsibility that comes with the job. Reporters gather information, verify them, do cross checks with other relevant parties, and then they bang out their stories. We want to be reporters, but we don’t want to trouble ourselves with all that difficult stuff. Who cares for nitty gritty details like fact checking and objectivity, right?

The other day, I received a message stating that a well known Malaysian official had been admitted to hospital for Covid-19 related issues. The message, in Malay, presumably originated from the official’s department. It was probably meant to alert them that one of their colleagues is undergoing treatment. I’m guessing.

Being a high profile individual, I had heard about his plight from another source. I told my friend to stop forwarding the message. “Let him deal with it, and let’s provide the family some space and privacy. This looks like a message from his immediate work group.”

But it was too late. The message had started appearing in a number of WhatsApp groups. Not too long, new mutations appeared. Within an hour, I received a crisp message from another friend stating that he had died.

“Are you sure? What’s your source,” I shot back.

There was a silence. A few minutes later, he came back to say that he heard in another group that the official was actually recovering.

In the meantime, you can imagine the predicament faced by the official and the family. They were inundated with calls. But the messages didn’t stop. They keep finding a life of their own.

We need to put a stop to them. We need to stop forwarding unverified messages. We need to stop trying to be reporters if we are not willing to do the homework.

Hb Singh is a Kuala Lumpur-based journalist with some experience in dealing with Sikh organisations, both from within and outside. 

* This is the opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.

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