AKEED

Dozens of Jordanian news websites published a story on the death of a mother in a car accident that occurred on Wednesday evening in Dahiyat Al Rasheed. The websites relied on a post that included inaccurate information about why the car rolled back, causing the death of Mrs. Ruba Khreisat due to internal bleeding after she had tried to save her two children.

The Jordanian Media Credibility Monitor "AKEED" followed the news published on news websites and observed a professional flaw in the coverage, which conflicts with the ethics of media work by regarding an opinion as information reflecting facts. The story included information that cannot be verified, and is most probably inaccurate. This information unintentionally hurts the two children. Most news websites that published the story relied on a post by a person on Facebook who happened to be at the hospital when doctors declared the death of the woman on the next day of the accident.

The person said in the post that "the story of this young woman is that yesterday, Wednesday, she was with her two children. When she got out of her car, one of the children released the handbrake, which caused the vehicle to roll back fast."

The key observation about this story is that there is no way to verify its truth and confirm that one of the two children (aged four and two) had accidentally released the handbrake. This is nothing more than an opinion or a hasty attempt to explain what happened. However, when it turns into a news story, it will haunt the two children for the rest of their lives and will make them feel guilty due to inaccurate information.

The AKEED Monitor assumes good faith in the publishing of a very moving human story. It supposes that fellow journalists did not notice that the story that discussed the reason for the movement of the car was an opinion, and not information, pertaining to an incident that no one can verify as there were no eyewitnesses near the car.

Therefore, we look forward to seeing news websites enjoying professionalism, knowing the boundaries of opinion and information, and heeding children"s rights. These websites should delete the sentence that has to do with the children in this story. AKEED also notes that some electronic sites treated the issue in accordance with professional rules and principles in covering news about accidents, especially with regard to not making hasty judgments.