When internet rumour takes on a life of its own

The KM Group columnist with his own look at the world

“Our trial stores will open in 2021. Very own the online Woolsworths (sic), so we will be retail only... This will be your Woolsworths (sic)”

That was the tweet that managed to ‘dupe’ the websites of national publications into running articles headlined things like: ‘Woolworths “to return to the UK high street”’ and ‘Woolworths confirms its stores are coming back’.

The problem? It was nonsense. Woolworths isn’t returning despite what @Ukwoolworths tweeted to a few hundred followers. Many saw straight through the clumsily constructed announcement. Among them was the Daily Mail’s business correspondent who made one call to the company’s PR firm to confirm it was fiction. The news waits for no man, though, and by the time he’d concluded his investigation

Mailonline was one of the dozens to run the story. Any of those articles will probably have attracted more clicks than The

Guardian’s follow up:

‘Sixth-form student behind Woolworths reopening fake news’.

Ultimately it’s not the most damaging fake news story of the year but it shows why many have adopted Donald

Trump’s put-down.

“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on” can be traced back to

17th century satirist

Jonathan Swift but in the era of social media it holds more weight. I’ll eat my notepad if news editors genuinely fell for the Woolworths news - it was an easy and relatively inoffensive way to get an article shared thousands of times on Facebook and if they didn’t do it they’d be in the minority.

There have been thousands of unsubstantiated statistics and stories shared millions of times on Twitter and Facebook in the past week.

Lazily regurgitating a retail rumour may seem harmless but it’s part of a much bigger problem which journalists should be fighting against and not aiding.

‘Ultimately it’s not the most damaging fake news story of the year but it shows why many have adopted Donald Trump’s putdown’