More media training required to prevent spread of rumours, experts say

A photo of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu shared by social media users in Jordan recently, claiming that it shows a Jordanian judge kissing the hand of a defendant

AMMAN — Social media outlets are increasingly becoming a source for rumours in Jordan, and news websites are mostly to blame for publishing them as facts, media experts said Thursday.

Recently, a video went viral on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp in Jordan showing a schoolgirl that fell off a Ferris wheel at a theme park and died on the spot. 

Social media users shared the video, saying it took place at an amusement park in Amman, and several news websites wrote articles about the incident, which later prompted the Ministry of Education to dismiss the news as baseless. 

The video later turned out to be of an accident in Iraq.

Also this week, social media posted several comments saying four Yemenis died of food poisoning after eating at a well-known restaurant in Amman. 

Several websites rushed to report the rumours as facts. Next day, the authorities said the Yemenis died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Social media users cannot be controlled, but it is news websites that are to blame. Not all of them, but unfortunately a large number of these websites publish these rumours without verification and start even writing analyses and articles on the topic without checking,” Nabil Al Sharif, former minister of state for media affairs, told The Jordan Times.

“When there is a vacuum, rumours grow like a snowball, and the less information there is, the more harm there will be and the bigger the rumours will become,” he said.

The former official stressed the need to train media personnel to increase professionalism, especially when it comes to dealing with social media.

The experts said authorities’ “sluggishness” in releasing information, as well as the “weak” levels of professionalism at many news websites exacerbate this issue.

“There is bureaucracy when it comes to providing information, and if the information is not provided on the spot, there will be a gap that will be filled by rumours,” said Jordan Media Institute Dean Basim Tweissi. 

“Nowadays, information travels fast, and with a large number of social media users, authorities need to respond faster to any rumours before they are circulated at a large scale and cause a major harm,” Tweissi added.

Nidal Mansour, head of the Centre for Defending Freedom of Journalists, said social media is not to blame.

“Social media users should not spread lies and rumours. But it is not their job to check facts. It is the job of media outlets to make sure that anything they report is correct, objective and answers all questions,” Mansour said.

“More training is needed and such mistakes are more likely to be seen in news websites with a small staff and which tend to focus on speed at the expense of accuracy,” he added.