False news report on website sparks oil price increase

On Wednesday KOTV posted a report on its website that a lightening strike had caused a fire at an oil refinery in Oklahoma. The company that owned the oil refinery announced that there had been no fire and the report was wrong. KOTV removed the story from its site but meanwhile the price of crude oil had increased by 40 cents a barrel. Now admittedly that was a less than 1% increase but after the finger of bad journalism was pointed at engadget recently, you think that the mainstream media would get this kind of thing right.

As an aside, oil prices had dropped by US$2 the day before after expectations that a new president in Nigeria would stablise the supply from the country. The more cynical amongst us may think that a greedy oil baron had phoned in with the news of the fire to KOTV.

Source: I4U

Featured Tags internet, oil
Sphere this entry»

Posted in Editorials, Internet by JB