Internet frauds and fanciful tales
Published September 26, 2001
Rush Limbaugh was in high dudgeon the other day.
He denounced ABC News anchor Peter Jennings as
"foolish, whining [and] babyish" for the disparaging
on-air comments Jennings supposedly made about President Bush during
coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks. But it soon emerged that the remarks
in question either were never made or were not disparaging. Upon learning the
facts, a chastened Limbaugh issued a full retraction.
How did the veteran radio commentator make such a major error? You can
probably guess. He read his e-mail, and he believed it.
Times of crisis create a voracious public appetite for information, and there have
always been charlatans and propagandists eager to take advantage of the
opportunity by putting out material that is false or misleading. What is different
today is the Internet, which makes it cheap, simple and quick to spread all sorts
of information, fraudulent or truthful.
An old adage says a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can
get its boots on. Today, the lie can make it all the way around the world, several
times, before it can be exposed.
In the days after Sept. 11, people heard all sorts of fascinating or disturbing news
via e-mail. After CNN aired footage of Palestinians celebrating the attacks, a
Brazilian graduate student got in touch with several colleagues claiming that the
videotape was taken during the 1991 Gulf war. An alleged quotation from the
writings of 16th-century soothsayer Nostradamus was disseminated to suggest
that he predicted the toppling of the World Trade Center buildings
Americans were urged to step outside with a lighted candle at 10:30 p.m. one
night because NASA was planning to take a special satellite photo. A Canadian
broadcaster's pugnacious defense of Americans as "the most generous and
possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth" was read far and wide.
All these items proved wholly or partly fictional. The CNN footage was brand new.
Nostradamus never foresaw the fate of the twin towers. NASA had better things
to do that evening. The Canadian's defense of Americans was 28 years old. But
the tales had no trouble finding believers, many of whom presumably will never be
dissuaded.
Sometimes the consequences are serious. The owners of a Naperville gas station
say they lost one-third of their usual business thanks to a false rumor, circulated
by e-mail, that they were supporters of Osama bin Laden.
The lesson is not that everything on the Internet should be doubted. It's that the
public should exercise particular skepticism about information of unknown
origins. Unlike established news organizations, mass e-mailers have no
institutional reputation to safeguard, no credibility to preserve. So they can sow
misinformation without fear of the consequences.
Viewers and readers should maintain a healthy skepticism about any information
they get. But here's a general rule of thumb: Always consider the source.
<<from today's Chicago Tribune>> |
