The proliferation of the internet and social media has made it easy for news outlets to solicit content. This past Wednesday night Omar Villafranca, a reporter with channel 5 in Dallas, shared a cautionary tale about the importance of fact checking user generation content.

Villafranca recalled a stormy day this past spring when NBC DFW put a call out for viewer pictures of hail. As the web team sorted through the images, they came across one that looked like this one:

 

 

 

 

 

Luckily, the web folks were savvy journalists, who looked at submitted images with a critical eye. These staffers shared the photo around the newsroom, but the picture never made it to the web. However, with tight deadlines and heavy workloads, it is easy to see how something like this could slip through the cracks.

Morgan Lyons with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system also discussed the dangers of the ubiquitous smartphone. Lyons told of a few tense moments following a phone call from a local news producer. The producer told Lyons a viewer had submitted a photo of a train parked on the DART track with a pile of debris in front of it.

Lyons immediately called his operations team, but no one knew of any accidents or damages. Next, Lyons examined the photo provided by the producer more closely, only to find that the train read “out of service.” After some further investigation, Lyons discovered the damage near the track had been caused by a non-DART related accident, and the train was simply being stored on the track.

The phone call by the producer and the quick follow up by Lyons resulted in the prevention of inaccurate news being reported and the protection of DART’s reputation. This story illustrates the importance of strong relationships with the media and with your internal partners. If DART had a reputation of being difficult to work with, then it is unlikely the producer would have bothered to call. And if Lyons didn’t have a strong network of connections within the company, then it’s unlikely that he would have been able to demystify the contents of the photo so quickly.

User generated content is a valuable asset for news outlets operating with ever shrinking staffs, but there are limitations. If communications professionals want to avoid the embarrassment of square hail or some more damaging, then they need to keep a trained eye on all content coming in and going out.