Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford dead? Fake news stories make dire claims

[snopes]

According to Snopes.com, these stories are automatically generated with fake scenarios via prank websites. Users simply plug in any name - which in this case were Goldblum and Ford.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009...re_claims.html

[snopes]

How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson.

At the same time Harrison Ford was also rumored to have fallen from a yacht off the south of France.

Web site snopes.com, which shoots down rumors, gossip and urban legends -- and how they originated -- said the likely culprit was a Web site which allows users to input celebrity names -- and then inserts them into fake templated stories (a further variant has stars dying in a plane crash).

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/26/m...kson.internet/

[snopes]

Disinformation spreads as quickly as truth on Twitter. A fake news article saying Jackson had died of a drug overdose circulated on Twitter. False rumours that Jeff Goldblum and Harrison Ford both died while filming in New Zealand are still making the rounds. An Australian entertainment TV reporter went to air with the "news" of Goldblum's death.

(It turns out the same cliff that had "claimed" Goldblum's life was also responsible for the earlier "deaths" of Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise. See Snopes.com for the full history of this internet-spread cut-and-paste obit.)

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/technol...and_who_1.html

[snopes]

While I'm saddened by the news of the deaths of Jackson and Fawcett, I'm much more interested in what happened on Twitter and how close it came to a massive fail. Rumors like the ones about Goldblum and Ford spread more slowly in the days of print and TV journalism and were squelched almost before they got out. In the digital age, a cottage industry sprung up around debunking popular rumors and myths (see snopes.com). The Internet was also a good place to spread and dispel rumors, but it wasn't until the advent of social networking that you could disseminate disinformation with any speed.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2349392,00.asp