I wasted almost 20 minutes of my time this morning chasing down a story that made the headlines on the morning television news and one other online publication. I won’t mention their names, though I am very tempted. Let’s me just say they are the one number on on television and number one online in Costa Rica.
What I was chasing down was a story involving the arrest three Costa Ricans, among the 47 arrested in Europe and Latin America, involved a child pornography ring using WhatsApp.
Watching the headlines I said here we go again, for it was just a few months ago we had a similar story. My thought was this is becoming a really big thing or maybe the technology, aside for making it easier to share the material, also has become a tool for authorities to unmask the perversions.
As I dug for the complete information for my report, something sounded all too familiar. The numbers were off, but. I checked the date on both the television news and online report and they were current, July 14 and July 13, respectively, yet a Google and Bing search for more information had nothing current in the past week or month.
Uhm.
This is when I decided to check my own archives. And there it was, in April, the report of the arrest of 39, including two Ticos, part of a large network connected by WhatsApp.
Since that April story, the number of arrests grew, as did the number of countries involved.
What is concerning is that the two sources I frequently use for my reports had not said the story was an update of the April story, rather writing an old story as a current event.
Lesson learned. Watch what you read.
Here at the Q I try to bring you the most current and relevant stories. And am trusting that if I do screw up, you, the readers, will call me out, and not like the commentators on the above two sources who are taking the news as todays, commenting away if it had just occurred.
I am confident that the readers of the Q have more common sense.
Peace out.
