There is a lot of rumour and speculation in the motorsport world. There isn’t anything wrong with a good bit of rumour on fan sites, blogs and discussion groups. It helps keep us all interested and we all like a good “what if” scenario over a pint.
Problems occur when these rumours are presented as hard news and people start believing them to be true. Us hardcore fans can often see through it but I’m sure we’ve all been in the situation where a casual fan, or just someone who knows we are fans, strikes up a conversation based on a falsehood and you have to patiently explain to them why they are wrong.
The respected F1 journalist Joe Saward has written on his blog about this problem and a fascinating discussion broke out in the comments. It is very long but it is worth reading every comment. This is about the future of web journalism.
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/thieving-from-the-thieves/
For a while now a certain agency has presented rumour as news. I will never write an article based on the output of this agency. People like that give the web a bad name among traditional media and among the people being written about.
I Watch Too Much Racing 