The advent of social networking and image sharing websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have without doubt been a great source of news generation for many news agencies across the world over the past few years but the inability of media houses to cross check these pieces of information they wish to work on have at some point in time generated law suits and controversies.
A similar situation is what Ghanaian TV Network Viasat 1 finds itself as it made a false publication on its staff Joselyn Dumas via its official website last week.
According to the website, the beautiful Ghanaian actress and TV hostess had posted via her Facebook page that she was not single and therefore not interested in the numerous messages that were sent to her via her inbox although investigations by www.nydjlive.com proved the said account is fake and has no relations with the actress.
The surprising aspect of the whole publication is the fact that the said presenter works with this same media outfit and could have been contacted to confirm or deny the post.
What happened to the act of verifying before presenting any material as news? Well, social media accounts could be deceptive as several accounts have been verified on Facebook even though the personalities have on several occasions denied knowledge of operating such accounts.
A clear case is that of Ghanaian actor John Dumelo who recently denied knowledge of operating the verified Facebook page which is said to belong to him.
We can state that there exists about 5 accounts that bear the name Joselyn Dumas but the official account is https://www.facebook.com/JoselynDumas .
It is therefore necessary how you deal with people on these social networking sites.
