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SORTING THROUGH THE SHOCKWAVES OF INFORMATION POST-QUAKE By Gerard ONeil     www.Stuff.Co.NZ     23/11/16 Any major news event generates more than one kind of shockwave, and the Kaikoura earthquake was no exception to this rule. The moment the seismic waves began spreading out from their epicenter, information waves began spreading as well. Those closest to the epicenter would have taken stock of their immediate situation and then begun to reach out to those closest to them. Those in less affected areas would have done the same but then quickly turned to established media outlets for more information. As an ex-pat living in Brazil, the first thing I knew about last week’s earthquake was via a WhatsApp from a Brazilian friend, asking if my family in New Zealand was OK. I immediately switched on my computer to find out what was going on. As I was logging on, only 20 minutes after the earthquake, I was able to watch the events unfold in real time. Of course, my first concern was to know if my family in Blenheim was OK. As no one in Blenheim was online, my Brazilian wife began to insist I telephone them. But, as I told her, the last thing I wanted to do was overload the phone system at exactly the time it was needed for more important things. Secondly, my brother was probably not at home, as he would have been checking on my elderly father who lives five houses away. One hour later, I received an email from my sister to say that apart from the upending of televisions and the loss of some ornaments, everything was OK. As the afternoon and evening wore on (it was still Sunday here in Brazil) I followed Stuff's live updates. When video footage began to be posted I entered YouTube. I saw some interesting footage of things falling off shelves etc.. I felt sorry for those innocently up loading their private videos, however, as I knew what was about to happen. Sure enough, within a short time the internet cowboys had begun their cut and paste work. They were taking the newly uploaded videos, splicing in images of the Christchurch earthquake, giving the video an outrageous title and then sitting back while they made money from the clicks. At about 10pm Brazilian time, I went to bed. By then, the tsunami alert had passed and a clearer picture of the situation was available. When I woke on Monday and turned on my computer, I was shocked to see the front page headline in my local newspaper. It proclaimed: “Second major earthquake rocks New Zealand! Coast being pounded by huge waves!" As I desperately scanned the article for more information, I soon discovered that the first earthquake referred to was, in fact, the Christchurch one from five years ago and, apart from the words "huge waves" in the headline, there was no mention of them in the article. The accompanying video footage was all from the Christchurch earthquake - the only difference was the date had been changed to 14/11/16. In my opinion, the journalists from Stuff and the other principal New Zealand media outlets did a fantastic and professional job covering the earthquake and its related events. If you want to disagree, I suggest you do some research on the internet, especially YouTube. There you will find all sorts of deadbeat amateur journalists and so called experts pretending be authorities. There’s a guy from Israel, who obviously has no idea where New Zealand is, bringing us breaking news about the earthquake. There is coverage of a tsunami hitting Christchurch, which is actually a tsunami invading a Japanese car park (even the commentary is in Japanese). But the one I like the most is entitled: “Real time coverage of Christchurch tsunami”. The phrase “real time” was correct, but the camera is not in Lyttelton or Christchurch. It appears to be a webcam in Queenstown focused on Lake Wakatipu.