When Fake News Targets Your Company

"ADI IGNATIUS: I'm Adi Ignatius. ALISON BEARD: I'm Alison Beard, and this is the HBR IdeaCast. ADI IGNATIUS: All right, so, Alison, did you know there is a social media report that says the lead article in last month's Harvard Business Review is actually a coded prophesy for the end of the world, and this thing is going crazy viral? ALISON BEARD: Wow, that is highly alarming; I didn't know that. ADI IGNATIUS: Well, because it of course didn't happen. ALISON BEARD: [Laughing] ADI IGNATIUS: And that's really the topic of this week's IdeaCast: fake news and how companies can respond to it."

"ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, it is prevalent. I mean, it's hard to say exactly who the perpetrators are, whether it's rivals, whether it's short sellers, whether it's just trolls trying to create some entertainment for themselves. You know, there's a case, a few years ago, Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, was shown in a video supposedly saying that by a certain year, "We will reduce the number of people in the world by 50 percent." OK, that's not a good statement, but that's not what he said. What he had said was, "We will reduce the number of people in the world who cannot afford our medicines by 50 percent." Somebody doctored it, and Pfizer had to deal with the fallout. So, it is definitely a problem, it's a growing problem, and companies need a strategy for it."

Fake news increasingly targets companies, with perpetrators ranging from rivals and short sellers to trolls seeking entertainment. Doctored media can drastically alter meaning, as demonstrated by a manipulated video that turned a CEO's statement about access to medicines into an alleged call to reduce the population. Traditional corrective measures and public statements are often insufficient to counter such misinformation. Businesses require deliberate strategies to detect, assess motives, and respond effectively to misinformation in order to mitigate reputational harm and manage fallout.

Read at Harvard Business Review