Reflection on Social Media Case 3: Tom Petty’s “Death” and Death

Tom Petty’s inaccurate death is certainly not the first. People tend to jump the gun on inaccurate sources and create fake news very often. In this instance, it was announced that Tom Petty had died of cardiac arrest when he was actually currently fighting for his life and had not passed away yet. TMZ, the king of fake news was the first to tweet out Petty’s death and many other news sources followed. People were showing their love for Petty and grieving when Petty’s daughter angrily posted something to the rolling stone, that said he was not dead yet and he was currently fighting for his life.

This is something that is very unprofessional among journalism and the industry itself took a big hit. People were outraged about the pre determined fake death news and Petty’s daughter was extremely angry. She posted "How dare you report that my father has died just to get press because your articles and photos are so dated," http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/media/tom-petty-death-media/index.html I can only imagine the amount of anger the family should have towards the media for jumping the gun on social media in such sad time.

Fake news is everywhere and is something that we all have to be aware of. Even if a post says “confirmed” that does not mean it is true. I think we should always find different sources and gather all our information off of multiple sources rather than just one to protect ourselves from fake news that may deceive us. Nowadays you can never believe anything you hear or see so you just have to become aware of all of the flaws in our media today. Inaccurate news and sources are meant to catch our attention and make us think very one sided, that is the purpose of fake news everywhere and we just have to be aware of that and approach every article or post we come across with an open mind.

 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161122080756.htm