One of Ireland’s most famous radio broadcasters, Gerry Ryan, was found dead this afternoon. News trickled out on twitter gradually following a tweet from Miriam o Callaghan confirming the news at approx 2.40pm…
RT @MiriamOCal: @unamullally Tragically it is true. So terribly shocking and sad. Life is just too cruel sometimes. RIP
That message was later deleted, but swiftly followed by an update on breakingnews.ie at 2.45pm. RTE didn’t publish the news until about 3.30pm (by which stage ‘Gerry Ryan’ was a trending topic on twitter) and his wikipedia profile had been updated.
It’s strange to think that a voice we hear so often will no longer be heard… whilst Gerry Ryan had his fair share of critics, he did pull in listeners and was a big character which made him a successful talk show host. No doubt he’ll be missed by many…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmxrR6Ky0BM
This is perhaps the real danger with social media… it’s virtually impossible to keep anything quiet, no matter how sensitive the information is. Why does stuff like this have to be protected? It’s important to notify families of news before it gets to anyone else.
One tweet or one rumour and that’s it… it’s off… it’s truely frightening the pace at which it can spread and of course bad news always travels much faster than good news…