Thursday, September 18, 2008

What can happen when you use a yahoo address..

... you end up with someone else losing their licence to business. Call it the law of unintended consequences if you will.

Someone sent a fake story out yesterday about the President planning to resign after the cabinet reshuffle, purporting to be from the News Agency of Nigeria - NAN. Channels TV duly reported the story, then had its licence withdrawn for doing so.

If only organisations public and private in Nigeria would use proprietary registered domain names, rather than fakeable gmail and yahoo addresses, these kind of misunderstandings could not occur. It looks like NAN at least has tightened up its act on this score. It should perhaps be a legal requirement in Nigeria that corporate communications must come from proprietary registered domain name email addresses.

Hopefully, Channels will be back up soon. It is pretty much the best TV news service in Nigeria at the moment. They will of course have learnt a valuable lesson about the importance of fact-checking through this storm in a teacup!

Read the story here.

7 comments:

Red Eyes 2:53 pm  

what are the rules? even if they will be back on air, is such an oversight enough grounds to lose/suspend a license? were they given enough warning to correct the error i.e. an apology or deployment of the reporter etc? in the eyes of history, how transparent is this government?

Onyeka 2:57 pm  

Fine they got wrong info, but frankly it's human error. Crap happens. There's no justification for REVOKING their license. When AP was accused of doctoring a few of their images sometime ago, were people arrested?

The nigerian government has overreacted, again, as usual over the silliest issue, and I hope they come to their senses soon, before this embarassing situation escalates.

Patrice,  3:27 pm  

I have just the person to get Channels TV back on air. He can be contacted at

[email protected]

Jaycee 3:41 pm  

"If only organisations public and private in Nigeria would use proprietary registered domain names, rather than fakeable gmail and yahoo addresses..."

There lies the problem...

Moni 9:11 pm  

Registered domain names can also be faked, it's just going to cost you some money to do it. Domain name reg on Go Daddy costs about $10.

I guess it depends on how serious about the prank you are.

All professional organizations should do business through their registered domain names, rather than yahoo!

Kpakpando 5:25 am  

funny enough this is the very reason Gov. Palin's email got "hacked" into.

tps360 8:16 am  

"If only organisations public and private in Nigeria would use proprietary registered domain names, rather than fakeable gmail and yahoo addresses..."

thats the problem right there.Its a shame...

Channels televisions should have contacted the governement agency in question after receieving the email..... u need to double check info's before putting them on air

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