Air France Flight 447 Photo Hoax: Source Check Failure

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The News--Episode 004 21st June

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In the hunt for more unique coverage, some mainstream media outlets seem to be forgetting to practice one of the few remaining principles that set them apart from other the new-age media sources. That principle being – checking information sources for credibility. It is understandable that some of the online news networks tend to lack on the credibility side of things occasionally, trying to construct coverage based on images and footage as they come through Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and other crowdsourcing means. Accuracy is sometimes sacrificed for the sake of posting the developments on any given story in real time 'as it happens'. On the other side of the spectrum are the mainstream media outlets that are supposed to take their time to verify information sources they rely on, sacrificing the promptness of their news coverage sometimes. As news consumers, it was up to us to decide whether we would opt out for immediate news coverage that might not be 100% accurate, or the verified but delayed version of the events.

However, the recent incident involving photos that were supposedly taken from inside the cabin of Air France Flight 447 seconds before the plane crashed into the Atlantic on June 1 has raised questions as to whether some mainstream media no longer does a good job of checking their information sources.

As Breaking News On reports, three mainstream media outlets in Netherlands, Poland and Bolivia have treated the fake Air France Flight 447 photos as authentic and featured them in their news coverage.

The photos depict utter chaos within a plane cabin with people grabbing oxygen masks and a person being sucked out from the airplane. Breaking News On is alleging the photos came from the shots taken for the famous TV series Lost.

BNO provides links to the newscasts that made use of the photos.