Mark Distefano a former newsreader at JJJ Radio now working for Buzzfeed has created a national (bled over into international) media storm which has seen fans of a popular music teen star threatened with death, his former employers radio station bombarded by protests and nearly 65 articles written by everyone from Fairfaxs faux-femme rag The Daily Mail to The Business Review Weekly. At first I started writing an article about it because its funny. But now it seems more like a brilliant example on how easily any blog or gossip site or news site can invent their own news and pass it from source to source. On Monday Mark Distefano former newsreader and sacked former JJJ radio employee invented an article about Taylor Swift fans wanting Shake It Off added to the Hottest 100 yearly poll. At that point no one did or had even thought about it. In under 24 hours he used fake tweets to his former employers to build the story and fed it to another gossip site Pedestrian TV. In the next 48 hours it made its way across social media like Twitter and Facebook and caused Swift fans to vote in the poll. In 36 hours it was being covered by 38 print and online publications. By Friday it had resulted in the song getting overwhelming support at the station and JJJ fans to threaten her fans with death and compare her to ISIS. So what is it about? Is it about Taylor Swift and how she deserves to be in the poll? Is it about former JJJ fans like most of my friends voting for her just to bring down JJJ a few pegs? or because they hate it now? Is it about how fair or unfair JJJ is? Is it about how Taylor Swift is similar to most music on there anyway? Is it about how Milky Chance covered her song so whats the difference? NO. ALL WRONG. Its a disgruntled former employee of JJJ who using the power of his current employers Buzzfeed and the gullibility of the general public (particularly the young) who get most of their information from these sites and believe instantly everything they read to take revenge on his former employers. It wasnt the brainchild of Taylor Swift even though I wouldnt put it past her. It was invented out of thin air by one guy because of how much power he has simply by working for the right website and its now been covered 63 times in 5 days and has resulted in the campaign being controversial with everything from radio playlist fairness to feminism being used to fuel it and even resulted in one poor girl who doesnt know shes a pawn being threatened with death. This is exactly how the Shirtgate controversy started last year. One journalist posted something to Twitter and then because of how Twitter works and who she is it became a story. Being passed virally from feed to feed until some journalist decides it becomes a story. Like Chineses whispers the Taylor Swift JJJ story has grown and changed with more complete lies and fabrications and of course personal interpretations from writers at news and gossips sites making it grow. The most fascinating thing about this is it has taught me that there is no such thing as the media anymore. We are the media. The media is now a loose collection of websites and because social network allows them a direct line to the general public with more immediate delivery. Something like this is so easy its almost a crime. Actually it is. Technically the media are meant to be held accountable for lying and technically if JJJ was smart they could go back to that Buzzfeed article and sue the writer for lying about them. See this is an eye-rolling who gives a shit issue that doesnt exactly pale in comparison to most of what is happening in the world. But with such an innocuous subject it was easy to turn into a worldwide reported issue and all it took was one website connected to The Huffington Post whos job is to make pithy celebrity gossip articles which have mostly images in them to look like a meme to snowball into 63 articles in 5 days. With only some articles alluding to the source. But all happily reporting on it the way its author wanted it to. If it was this easy for a gossip website to spread this so quickly and blow it out of proportion by birthing it and feeding it with completely false and imaginary information. Imagine how easy it is for an actual media empire like Fairfax and Murdoch to do it.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:25:23 +0000
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