So the internet is currently grinding to a halt with reaction to Michael Jackson’s untimely death. And naturally it’s a field day for consipracy theorists and rumour mongers already. (Who placed a bet the O2 gigs wouldn’t happen?)

But, with a couple of other celeb deaths today, the intriguing ‘news’ out there at the moment is of the ‘death’ of Jeff Goldblum in a fall while on a movie set, and of Harisson Ford variously going missing on a boat/helicopter, presumed crashed. We read they are both currently working on the same movie. I’d love to know the origins of these ’stories’. Could it even have a distant PR connection?

Every week we see how tools like Twitter are shaping the instant nature of global communication – and how the worst, gossipy tendencies of us as a species are magnified along with the unquestionably liberating power that comes with all this too.

At times like this the mainstream newspaper sites start to look a vital, rather than shaky proposition. But newsrooms deciding on tomorrow’s headlines have got a tough task trying to keep up with the user driven aspects of an ‘event’ story like MJ tonight. They also better beware of printing misinformation pulled from any source (Jackson ’suicide’, anybody?) – trust no site until this gossip frenzy has calmed down.