If you've been on social media in the past week, you've probably seen the video above floating around online.
Kate Hansen, a member of the U.S. Olympic Luge team, tweeted the video earlier last week after uploading it to her Youtube account (katehansen92). The 18-second clip is titled “Epic #SochiFail: Wolf in my hall,” and shows a wolf wandering the halls in the city’s Olympic Village housing. Hansen’s tweet uses the hashtags “SochiFail” and “SochiProblems,” both of which have garnered thousands of tweets from news organizations, Olympians and many others regarding the poor conditions from the host city, so it was no surprise to see a wolf wandering the halls of Hansen’s dorm.
Hansen’s tweet was retweeted over 2,600 times and the actual video has almost 5 million views. Media outlets all over the country aired the video and many news websites shared the link to Hansen’s Twitter and her Youtube account. Within 24 hours, the video had been seen by millions.
And that’s when Jimmy Kimmel stepped in.
The video was faked. The entire scene was shot in Kimmel’s studio after his staff recreated a hallway in the Olympic Village dorms. You can watch his video segment below.
As part of his show, Kimmel pieced together clips taken from the media after Hansen tweeted the video. Not only does Kimmel’s prank show the gullibility of viewers and social media users, it also shows the failure of news stations to provide accurate facts. In the reading for tomorrow’s class, we see the first Principle of Journalism is an obligation to the truth. Hansen tweeted the video as a truth, but it seems many news organizations failed to verify the accuracy of the content. A major part of journalism involves separating fact from fiction before reporting a story to the masses. Without a doubt, social media makes this more difficult. Regardless, accuracy is arguably the most important factor in the field of journalism, so reporters must be careful to verify their sources before they share. Unfortunately, it looks like many individuals in the media failed to investigate the girl who tweeted wolf.