Journalism FTW! They Got The Wrong Guy.

I know, this one isn’t really video game related, but it’s just too good to not mention it.

After Tim K.’s killing spree, “journalists” from all around the world were desperately looking for information about the gunman. And they found it. Or at least they thought so. Using search engines like 123people they found Tim K.’s profile on Xing. But as you can guess, there is more then one Tim K. out there. What they found was the profile of a 21-year old trainee from Bremen, who shares his name with the gunmen. And of course, instead of checking the facts first, they swarmed all over it like locusts.

Wait, Bremen? That’s more then 600 km away from the site of the killing spree. And wasn’t the gunmen 17 and not 21 years old?

Well that didn’t bother the thousands of people who wrote e-mails from all around the world, and journalist that called the wrong Tim K.’s employer looking for information.

The story could be over here, but Tim K. went on to do something really stupid. Getting pissed with all the people accusing him to be a murderer, he edited his Xing profile saying that he is looking for handguns and is selling hand grenades and instructions to build explosives. Xing took his “joke” down after 3 minutes, but he still lost his job.

Unless “journalists” and press agencies realise that you need to double and tripple check your facts, we will continue to see stuff like this happening. Especially since it is so easy to forge infos in the internet. But hey, who needs to check facts as long as you are the first one who is shouting it out?

Via Die neuen Netzeitung (this and this article) and Der Tagesspiegel.