Mini Case Study: BBC

The BBC is one organization that has been a victim of misrepresentation of identity. In November 2004 the BBCs international news channel, BBC World, broadcast an interview with a man claiming to be a representative of Dow Chemical. This company took over the running of a chemical factory in Bhopal, India from Union Carbide. In 1984 around 20,000 people lost their lives in a chemical leakage from the plant. Dow Chemical have been fighting legal moves to make them accept responsibility for the disaster as well as for the compensation claimed by survivors and the clean-up of the plant. The interviewee was a hoaxer who had previously targeted Dow Chemical. Masquerading as a Dow Chemical representative, the hoaxer announced during the broadcast that the company now accepted full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. The interview was broadcast twice on BBC World and on BBC television and radio before the hoax was detected.

The hoaxer was able to pull off an elaborate stunt because a BBC producer had accessed the Dow Chemical website to find a company representative from their media relations department. However, the Dow Chemical website had been hacked into and contact details of the bogus company representative inserted. This was the information that the BBC acted upon and resulted in the booking of an interview with the hoaxer. The BBC issued an apology to viewers, listeners and the company and set up a review of their procedures for dealing with information posted on websites. This case illustrates the need for organizations to be constantly vigilant for breaches of security and to be circumspect in their use of information derived from websites.

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