Instant Information
Instant Information
Monday, 8 November 2010
There were three widely reported serious incidents involving airliners this week.
In Cuba on Thursday, a Cubana ATR-72 flying on a domestic flight from Santiago to Havana crashed near Guasimal, killing all 68 people on board. On the same day, one of the four Rolls-Royce engines on a Qantas Airbus A380 suffered an uncontained engine explosion as it was climbing, shortly after take-off from Singapore en route to Sydney. Although engine parts fell on the Indonesian island of Batam, there were no injuries of fatalities, either on the plane or on the ground. The third incident occurred early the following morning when a JS Air Beechcraft 1900 crashed on take-off from Karachi Airport in Pakistan, killing all 21 people on board.
Perhaps the superstition is true – maybe significant events come in threes.
The media has been (and still is) full of reports and speculation about the Qantas incident, but very little has been heard about the other two crashes, both of which resulted in significant numbers of fatalities. Could that possibly be because the two fatal accidents occurred in so-called “Third World” countries?
This is more than an interesting study in media reporting, however. One of the consequences of the A380 incident was that following the speculative news reports, the value of Rolls-Royce stock dropped by 5%, or about US$1 billion. A fall of that magnitude can affect the entire UK stock market and economy as a whole, which can in turn affect millions of lives through retiree pension funds that are still recovering from the financial crises of recent years.
Clearly, we now live in an era when information technology is capable of reporting a possible plane crash around the world in a matter of seconds. Initial (and even speculative) news reports are now widely distributed globally long before the full story can possibly be obtained, and the public’s obsession with instant information (especially tragedies and other sensational events) makes this increasing likely. It also means that share traders and some stock owners may well panic or move to sell their stocks immediately out of fear of losing money. This in turn can hurt the employees of the companies affected (in this case Rolls-Royce, Airbus, Qantas and their many suppliers), causing layoffs of workers and lowering the value of those companies.
I appreciated a very perceptive view expressed on this issue of ‘instant information’ by Steven Forshaw in the aftermath of the Qantas incident. Steven Forshaw is an Australian who is former Vice-President of Singapore Airlines’ Public Affairs, and now Head of Public Affairs for Microsoft Asia-Pacific. Writing on his Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/notes/stephen-forshaw/some-thoughts-on-qf32-crisis-management-and-the-media/167384773288830), he made some excellent observations, including these comments that I quote:
“This begs the question; did Qantas tell CNBC television that the plane crashed, or did they say that the plane involved in an incident near Singapore was an Airbus A380? Did CNBC report that the plane crashed? Or did Reuters add that? Whichever, for 17 minutes until it was corrected, the impact of this crisis on Qantas’ reputation meant nothing to the families of the 400+ people on that flight, who would have been distraught and suffering a level of anguish that was entirely avoidable if a serious mistake in news reporting, like this one, didn’t occur.
And therein lies a warning: for all the principles that an organisation can follow to ensure its reputation is safeguarded, the speed of news, and the nature of wire services that measure speed against their competitors in seconds, means you can end up reacting to a crisis far worse in perception that reality. We all know speed compromises accuracy sometimes.
17 minutes is an age in the generation of new media: down the side bar of that Reuters webpage are buttons: Tweet This, Recommend or Share on Facebook, Share on LinkedIn, among others. One mouse click by a thousand people during the 17 minutes that story was uncorrected spreads the story to millions within seconds; most of whom will believe it as true because it comes from a credible source like Reuters.
That’s what happened yesterday. I, for one, would like to hear how that story ever appeared on the wires from a reputable news agency like Reuters; especially as it appeared without a crucial word in the story: Unconfirmed.”
So – why am I interested in this issue? Apart from my well-known long-standing interest in planes, this incident strikes me as having a very strong parallel with the way gossip can travel like wildfire in a school community, and especially in a residential one such as ours. People seem to love gossip to the point where it can become an addiction for some, and there can thus be a temptation to spread it long before the facts can be checked. Indeed, the most juicy gossip unfortunately often seems to continue to spread long after the facts have demonstrated that the rumour is false, despite the harm it might cause to feelings, reputations and livelihoods. If half the gossip I have heard in the College was true, we would have relocated the College to Guangzhou, employed the spouse of a former teacher who doesn’t exist, and erected a 3-metre high barbed wire perimeter fence to surround the College!
There was a danger of unchecked gossip spreading this week as two of my colleagues – fellow Heads of other UWCs – resigned at short notice. In both cases, I heard the news within a few hours of the official announcements. In both cases, the medium for communication was the internet – Facebook in one case and e-mail in the other.
The loss of these two Heads from the UWC Movement will be felt very deeply. Although few people in their respective Colleges would (or could) know this, both made extremely valuable and hard-working contributions in our UWC Heads’ meetings, reflecting the deep commitment that each had (and has) for the profoundly life-changing qualities of a UWC education. Both argued passionately and eloquently on many occasions, and in diverse ways, for transforming the tremendous potential of UWCs to make them even better learning environments for their students, as well as making the UWC Movement in general more philosophically grounded and more relevant to the real-world challenges of the coming decades.
For me personally, it is sobering that although I announced my departure from LPCUWC a couple of weeks ago (for totally different, and thankfully much more positive, reasons), I will still be attending UWC Heads’ meetings in 2011 without benefitting from the input of these two very valuable colleagues and good friends. The sense of loss is real.
Acknowledgement: The photo of the damaged Qantas engine was taken by David Loh for Reuters.
The Courtyard has been strangely quiet this week as all the IB1 students have been away in China on service projects