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Tom Foremski of SiliconValleyWatcher shot to even-greater prominence when he (and his son) outed YouTube star LonelyGirl15 as a fraud.  As he has continued to ponder "what it all means," Tom has identified the issue of "trust" as one of the core concepts with which the mediasphere must grapple.

"Free access to distribution systems means exposure to lies, frauds and creative license. We need a better system to verify the origins and authenticity of information."

The NY TIMES covered this concept, from a marketing perspective, this week:

"'Advertisers who want to generate interest in a product with a mysterious teaser campaign may tread lightly around consumers who feel increasingly duped by fake videos and covert viral marketing efforts,' said Andy Sernovitz, the chief executive of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, a trade group in Chicago."

The public response (pro & con) to LonelyGirl15 and other viral campaigns will adjust the campaign plans of marketers.  But, Tom rightly points out in his post that this issue of trust also applies to the Social Media News Release, and to "news" in general. 

It's all well and good for the corporation to offer-up official content, which bloggers and other media mavens can mix-up, mash-up, etc., but by the same token the original source of that content ought to be identifiable and verifiable.  This is an especially pressing issue as the Social Media era dawns.

You can trace this need for authenticity-of-authorship back to the original invention of the printing press.  According to Wikipedia:

"Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful. It was suddenly important who had said or written what, and what the precise formulation and time of composition was. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, 'One Author, one work (title), one piece of information...'"

Thinking specifically about the Social Media News Release, I wonder if it is possible to make it standard for any piece of content that's copied from the news release to automatically link back to the originating URL?  In other words, if you were to cut&paste an executive's quote from a Coca-Cola press release, could some sort of Digital Rights Management system be used to automatically verify to all readers that that quote links back to the official Coca-Cola website?  Perhaps the microformat standard being worked on at the Social Media Club will incorporate some of the capability.  Perhaps the XPRL movement will be our salvation.

Let's hope someone figures this out soon.  It's a brainiac-level problem.  Content without trust = anarchy.

Tags: tom+foremski, siliconvalleywatcher, lonelygirl15, public+relations, hrelease, marketing, social+media, pr+2.0, social+media+news+release