When Fake News Targets Your Company

I'm Adi Ignatius. I'm Alison Beard and this is the HBR Idea Cast. Alright, 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 prophecy for the end of the world. And this thing is going crazy viral. Wow, that is highly alarming. I didn't know that.

Well, because it of course didn't happen. And that's really the topic of this week's idea cast, fake news. And how companies can respond to it. Yeah, it's interesting because I think about this so much in the realm of politics. and science, but I haven't really thought about it affecting businesses. Is it pretty prevalent?

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 some entertainment for themselves. You know, there's a case a few years ago, Albert Burla, 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%. Okay, 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 fifty percent. Somebody doctored it and Pfizer had to deal. with a fallout. So it is definitely a problem, it's a growing problem, and companies need a strategy for it. So what do you do to counter this phenomenon? Who did you talk to?

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