Mad rush to 'break news' spawns premature obits on social media

KOLKATA: In this age of social media invading every aspect of life-and death-there seems to be a race even to post obituaries, apparently without verifying facts or paying much heed to how the families concerned might feel.

Such was a misplaced mad rush on Wednesday evening when even public figures were taken in by rumours of filmmaker Mrinal Sen's death. Various RIP updates irresponsibly condoled the director's "demise", while the phone didn't stop ringing at the Sen residence. On Thursday morning, the family said: "News on Mrinal Sen's passing away is false. He is absolutely fine and having tea right now."

A few days ago, on June 7, someone had started a similar irresponsible rumour about actor

Ranjit Mullick

's ill health, with Whatsapp groups buzzing with fake forwards. The whispers were finally silenced when

Mullick

's son-in-law

Nishpal Singh Rane

announced the actor was in

America

.

Sociologists attributed this tearing rush to the "me-first" syndrome. "Without verifying facts, these people want to be the first to break the news. The common man, too, wants to come up with breaking news. In a bid to beat mainstream media, they are posting wrong information," said sociologist

Ruby Sain

. Even politicians and authors are not spared. A hoax tweet, which had prematurely declared the death of former British PM

Margaret Thatcher

, was retweeted around 2,000 times in just 10 minutes. Author

Mark Twain

used humour to react to such rumours. His famous comment back in 1897, "the report of my death was an exaggeration", still remains one of the most-talked-about reactions to such hoaxes.

Social scientist

Sudeshna Nanda

, a

Tata Institute of Social Sciences

alumna, rules out the possibility of jealousy of rival camps spreading such rumours. "At the level of celebrities, such hoaxes can't sabotage a career," Nanda said. She would rather attribute this to an increasing attention-seeking behaviour. "These days, people are so concerned about how many likes and shares they get for their posts that they want to create a buzz fast and impulsively tweet without verifying the truth," she said.

While such hoaxes were earlier restricted to celebrities in the West, they have now reached

Bengal

's doorsteps. From Steve Jobs to Barack Obama, from Justin Bieber to Angelina Jolie, from Taylor Swift to Jackie Chan, history has been witness to all their "deaths". In India, Such rumours didn't even leave some of India's biggest icons, including Amitabh Bachchan, Lata Mangeshkar, Shashi Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, were not spared. Dilip Kumar has been subject to such a rumour at least thrice over. But celebrities in Kolkata were largely left undisturbed till June. "Kolkata is changing like other cities. Now, this trend is picking up. It is the impact of modernisation," Nanda said.

Sometimes even celebrities step into such a trap as was evident from author Amitav Ghosh making the mistake regarding Mrinal Sen. After the Sen faux pas, Suhel Seth tweeted that the lesson learnt was not to "tweet without waiting for the whole world to confirm the news". Guitarist

Debashish Bhattacharya

said, "Social media is full of hoax and confusing 'breaking news'. I had reposted the 'death news' update of BB King by a close friend and a serious musician. But later, it turned out to be a hoax. We still have the habit of believing others. Sometimes, that backfires." Now, Bhattacharya waits and calls up to check news headlines and other resources before writing anything. "I never jumped the gun in case of Mrinal Sen. I wish him a healthy life," he said.



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