It’s almost New Year’s, and that means it’s time to look back at the year that was, to look forward to the year that will be, and to be thankful you didn’t do something utterly clueless through the media. That is, unless you’re one of the following:
- Don’t send out clueless, racist tweets, especially before getting on a 12-hour flight.
That’s the lesson PR practitioner Justine Sacco learned after she sent out a Tweet that read “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white! — Justine Sacco.” She sent the Tweet out right before boarding a 12-hour flight from England to South Africa. Her remark spawned a lengthy online firestorm under the hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet. Once Sacco did land, she learned she was unemployed. (And we have an example of here Truth #2 – There’s no such thing as the mainstream media. Twitter spread the story massively and rapidly on its own.) - It’s really clueless to drop an F-bomb when you are a TV anchor anywhere near a microphone.
This is a lesson that television anchors have had a hard time with this year. KSNW anchor Justin Kraemer in Wichita, Kansas failed to learn the lesson from A.J. Clemente, who dropped a “f#$in s%&t” over a live microphone in Bismarck, North Dakota on his first day on the job back in April. Kraemer ended his Saturday night newscast with the ever popular, “Let’s get the f$%k outta here.” - Don’t be so clueless that you pass on a fictional viral story presented as being true.
There’s an old saw that says, “If a story seems too good to be true, it probably is.” And I would add, that goes double for the Internet. The New York Times ran a story earlier this month about viral stories that became popular on the interwebs that have minimal to zero truth value. Remember that old AP adage, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out…”