Traditional news sources have journalists who check the facts and say like the BBC always have two legitimate news sources. But across the internet there is loads of small news services and news blogs which offer news stories. Sometimes their news stories are wrong and inaccurate. Take yesterday the gay blog “Unicorn Booty”. They published this story Canadian Gov’t Dissolves Thousands of Same-Sex Marriages (Including Dan Savage’s) the only other source I can find of the story is at the Canadian paper Globe and Mail.

UB made the story more alarmist and sensationalist than the original article though “omg gays you are no longer married”. The story was not true (it was a misunderstanding over a divorce case) and on UB’s FB page Canadians immediately started questioning it. Why was this not formally announced by the govt?

UB didn’t even retract from the story and wrote late last night that they couldn’t get back on to their server or fb page to update it (no apology then). A group of gay rights lawyers in North America looked at info from the story and said there was no danger of Canadian married gays or non resident married gays in Canada, here is the press release- LGBT Legal Groups: Canadian Marriages of Same-Sex Couples Are Not in Jeopardy Whilst it could happen, its not currently law!

Unicorn Booty caused panic though as the story was circulated 20,000 times or something (or maybe that is what they wanted to publicise themselves) and loads of Canadians and gays who got married in Canada phoned registry offices to check if they were still married. They were!

On another gay blog a few months ago, a friend was accused of doing something for gay rights for himself not for “the cause”. The blogger refused to admit what he published was wrong and decided to bad mouth my friend across the net. Finally it was proved that he was wrong with his information. He is not trained in journalism, he was just a gay guy with a blog that got popular!

Becareful what you share online. Some places deliberately make a story more sensationalist to make it spread. There was clues that this story was poorly written at best. If you searched Google there was only one other source, apart from all the social network sharing. None of the big news sites touched it with a barge pole. Secondly if the story was true and Canadian gays were no longer married or at least non residents were, you would think there would be official government communications.

Challenge what you read and think before you share :)