If there was ever an indication of the power of the online media, it has been made amply clear in the various conflicts that are gripping the world.
We have seen it happen lately in the Ukraine, where an airliner was shot down, and also in places such as Libya, Gaza and Syria. People take footage on their mobile phones and it soon finds its way to online portals that upload the news. Another such example was when an aircraft was escorted in to Manchester Airport yesterday by a fighter jet and the footage was sent to the BBC. This type of interactivity between citizens and online media have resulted in the quickest and most eyewitness orientated reports that we have ever seen in the world of news. The speed with which word gets around is stunning, almost beyond belief.
From a local angle, the same happened on Monday evening. In the space of an hour, a Maltese man was feared missing in Libya, only for the whole story to be turned on its head within the space of an hour as online reports of his possible predicament began to surface.
And that’s the thing. Local news is no longer local news – the minute it gets onto the internet, it can be seen by anyone and anywhere. To put it into context, the brother of a Maltese ma reported his sibling to be missing, most likely in Libya.
The man had travelled to work offshore near Libya, on board a ship and had not made contact with his family for two weeks. His brother filed a police report on Sunday, and on Monday evening, the government’s crisis centre (sharply changing tack from a previous case) called for a media briefing.
The government was cautious, but informed the media that this person had been traced somewhere near Libya through a mobile phone ping, but could no longer be located. Within minutes of the announcement, the online portals had the story of a possible missing person being lost in Libya. Frantically, newsrooms around Malta tried to establish contact with the person who made the report and all published his comments on portals.
Yet within 40 minutes of the announcement, it was the brother of the man who filed the report who got back in touch with various newsrooms and informed the media that his sibling had made contact with him from on board a ship. It turns out that he was on board the same ship that he had left on originally and had not even disembarked. It seems that he only learned that his family had reported him missing after he had seen the online news report. And that was that.
A case of a person being reported missing in Libya, who found out that people were worrying about him. Less than an hour after the announcement was made, he made contact with Malta from a ship in the middle of the Mediterranean to say that he was safe and sound. The internet and web based media’s power and capabilities are a thing to behold.