False accusations against a blue shark persist.

While it’s not uncommon for details of breaking news to be sketchy, if not entirely inaccurate, most media outlets tend to follow-up on a story when it turns out the story has been falsely or incorrectly reported. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case with the following publications:

• The Daily Mail – British holidaymakers warned to stay away from Spanish beaches after shark attack on schoolgirl
• The Leader – BATHERS URGED TO REMAIN VIGILANT AROUND TARRAGONA BEACHES
• The Daily Star – COSTA GIRL IS SAVAGED BY SHARK

All three of these publications ran stories reporting a shark attack caused by a blue shark, yet none of them have any follow-up story clarifying that no such shark attack occurred, nor that the injured girl was bitten by a bluefish. It should be pointed out that The Daily Mail and The Daily Star both appear to be tabloid-style “news.” However, The Leader looks to be a “legitimate” news source. In addition to the three sources above, The Barcelona Reporter, ran a sensationalized version of the story, Blue shark bites girl in Spain, nearly severs foot, off Tarragona beach. To The Barcelona Reporter’s credit, they did add a paragraph at the end of their story mentioning that it was later concluded that the bite was consistent with a bluefish bite, but they didn’t change the headline of the story nor did they remove the content in the story claiming that a blue shark almost severed the girl’s foot.

While most of the publications that ran with this story seem to be far-from-reliable sources of news, the story and lack of follow-up illustrate how sensationalism and fear-mongering seem to be more attractive “news” than actually reporting the facts, whenever a shark is involved (or not involved, at all, in this instance).