One day last week, a Tweet popped up and the photo looked … awfully familiar.
The website for Quebec’s French-language sports network TVA ran this little blurb on Dec. 15.
“Eugenie Bouchard was photographed in training with Thomas Hogstedt, and the images surfaced in the international media over the last week. Is Bouchard about to go back to her former coach?”
The source? A Spanish website, which “reported” this on Dec. 11:
“While there is still nothing official , according to Open Court and as stated by Tennis.com, Eugenie Bouchard could be once again be working with Thomas Högstedt . The proof? Pictures of both of them training together in Florida during the pre-season.”
That makes it sound as though two different sources “confirmed” this news. In fact, Tennis.com “reported” on Dec. 10 that “according to Open Court, the two were training on court at Bouchard’s base in Florida, where she is practicing during her offseason.”
So, really, just one source. This one right here, which reported this on … Dec. 6.
How many things are wrong in this chain of “news”, other than none of these sources had the common courtesy to link to the original story, or even credit the photo that was lifted?
A few, beginning with the fact that the two were not training “at Bouchard’s base in Florida.” Bouchard’s residence is in Miami; she and Högstedt were practicing at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, all the way across the state.
As well, while TVA “reported” that the “images surfaced in the international media over the last week.” In fact, they surfaced right at home, approximately a 15-minute drive from their own offices in Montreal.
What else? If the original “reporter” had bothered to actually read the story that accompanied the story he lifted, he would see that it was clearly stated in the captions that the photos used were from a training session a year ago, in the same location. They were not, in fact, taken last week.
That’s a pretty major fail. If the TVA “reporter” had also gone to the original source, he or she would also have realized that the secondhand report on which they based their report was, in fact, inaccurate.
Checking for accuracy would have been as easy as dropping Open Court an e-mail, which could have been responded to in either of the languages in which the “reports” were written. But I guess when you’re scraping material from another source, that would be too much effort.
Moral of the story? Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. And wherever possible, dig through to the source that actually reported the information in the first place, rather than read something that might have gone through two or three interpretations before you finally see it. Good chance something might get lost in the translation.
Of course, that would be a lot easier if these media outlets would have the courtesy to link to the source that did all their work for them. Not to mention the fact that there were a lot more pics, and a lot more information (and even a video) in my original post. But hey …
(Note that in this specific instance, I did not link to these reports. They don’t deserve the clicks).
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