Just how do we know what’s true online?
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BY COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star
Oklahoma City sports reporter Jake Trotter can see why people fell for that fake story the other day on the Internet.
The story, about two Sooner quarterbacks getting arrested on cocaine distribution charges, had his byline, and people know he’s the OU beat writer. It had his paper’s Web site template.
And the writing, he says, was “close enough.”
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The story was posted on a Husker message board and spread virally — even a few radio stations in Texas picked it up — until “Darth Husker,” aka James Conradt, a 36-year-old Husker fan who works in computers at the University of Texas, was unmasked and apologized.
But it was a good fake.
“Had it been outlandish,” Trotter says, “it wouldn’t have been such an issue.”
Deceivers like Darth are becoming more sophisticated in this new world of new media, and so is their technology. So how do you know what to believe anymore? What’s credible on the Internet?
Trotter laughs when asked.
“I don’t know,” he says. “With all the rumors circulating through the Internet, it’s difficult to know what to believe and what not to believe. Anybody can start a rumor. Sometimes they turn out to be true, which gives them some credibility.
“Anybody can be a reporter now.”
Maureen Dowd, a columnist for the New York Times, faced a similar dark force the other day.
A fake column that looked real enough caught fire on blogs and chain e-mails. It had her byline, a headline. Some versions had her photo. It said Barack Obama was getting suspicious contributions form Iran, China and Saudi Arabia and should be audited.
Still more recent fakes:
* That video of a tornado, allegedly in Valentine, Neb. The Associated Press bought the footage from a freelancer for about $300. Major news outlets posted it on their Web sites until the AP realized it probably was from a 4-year-old tornado in Kansas. Trees had been digitally deleted and power lines added, according to an AP story, the image had been flipped, the action sped up.
* That photo of four Iranian missiles being launched. It ran on the fronts of major newspapers and on major Web sites. The fourth missile appeared to have been digitally added.
* That chain e-mail your Uncle Bruce sent you this morning about Barack Obama being a radical Muslim who won’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance. (Obama ranks as the second hottest urban legend right now on Snopes.com, a site that debunks Internet hoaxes.)
* That fake YouTube video showing cell phones making popcorn pop. (No. 4 on the Snopes list.)
With technology improving so much, it’s getting harder for people with untrained eyes to detect fakes. But there are a few things, experts say, that you can keep in mind.
Think about the source
Does a stripper selling photos seem credible?
Last fall, a young stripper sold photos of Oscar De La Hoya to an Internet gossip site, X17online.com (the same site Spurs star Tony Parker sued for posting stories that he cheated on Eva Longoria), and they went viral.
The photos allegedly showed the boxing champ in a woman’s wig, black heels and a fishnet bodysuit.
The photos seemed legitimate to most people posting comments on gossip sites. But the stripper later admitted they had been altered.
Would a major athlete cross-dress and romp with strippers? Possibly. People are freaky. But would he really let a stripper document it? A married man? Less likely.
Look closely at the photos. Maybe ask a photographer, if you know one.
“His face looks like it could have been cut and pasted,” Journal Star photographer Heidi Hoffman said, when a reporter showed her one of the photos still out there in cyberspace.
“His head looks big, doesn’t it?”
Think critically
Dr. Jerry Bockoven, chair of Nebraska Wesleyan’s psychology department, says people are more stressed than ever post-911, and are acting out in many ways.
“Being gullible is one of them,” he says.
Imagine the Internet is a person you know, he says, and 75 percent of the time, he tells the truth. But 25 percent of the time, he’s a bald-faced liar, just to get attention or to shock people.
Still, he’s easy to talk to and he’s right most of the time, and we’re too stressed and busy to take to take the time to think critically.
“So when the Internet says something, we grab it, we say it’s true, and we go on.”
Go with the best source
Though the mainstream media gets it wrong, too, remember that journalists get fired if they make stuff up. They get fired if they keep making mistakes.
They have their names on their stories and photos, and often their phone numbers, too. They have layers of editors as safety nets.
Wikipedia is not a best source.
Want to know when Heath Ledger was born? You probably can trust Wikipedia for that, but not much else. Remember, Wikipedia – edited by anyone who wants to be an editor — killed off Sinbad last year in a hoax.
L. Kent Wolgamott, who covers arts and entertainment for the Journal Star, says people should take Wikipedia and entertainment gossip sites with a grain of salt. When Ledger died earlier this year of an accidental prescription drug overdose, rumors filled the blogosphere that he’d killed himself.
Celebrity news on the Internet is a “cesspool,” he says. “Once you get off newspaper and TV sites and get into the blogs, there’s not a word of that you can believe.”
But Wikipedia, he says, does link to some credible sites. It can be useful.
Doubt any chain e-mail
PolitiFact.com, a joint project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, researches chain e-mail claims — as well as claims by candidates — and rates them on its truth-o-meter.
From “True” to “False” to “Pants on Fire.”
In one recent day, 22 of 30 chain e-mails checked by PolitiFact.com were untrue, according to Bill Adair, editor of the site.
“That’s not a very good batting average,” he says. “I go on the assumption it’s wrong, and then am surprised when I find out things are accurate.”
Such as the chain e-mail about a story John McCain has been telling — that a fellow POW in Vietnam created a makeshift American flag and got severely beaten for it. That was true, according to PolitiFact.com.
Add PolitiFact.com and Snopes.com to your “Favorites.”
And Don’t believe any chain e-mail, Adair says, that states something like, “I checked this out on Snopes, and it’s true!”
It’s probably not.
“I think what’s interesting about these chain e-mails is that they act like they are organisms that are evolving, and they take on different characteristics to adapt to this harsh environment.
“Maybe the media says he (Obama) is not a Muslim, so they stop putting that line in. But then someone starts saying, ‘Well, he took the oath of office on the Koran…’”
Adair says there are far more negative chain e-mails about Democrats than Republics. He doesn’t know why. He says the overwhelming majority are about Obama.
According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ … will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent … is it OBAMA??”
PolitiFact.com researchers looked into that chain e-mail.
They rated it “Pants On Fire.”
Remember: People are freaky.
Many do bad things if they think they won’t get caught.
“I think anonymity brings out the worst in people,” a computer expert said in this paper a few years back, talking about fan message boards.
He also said: “New people come along all the time and are naïve and believe too much of what they read. A lot of people just post stuff to stir the pot.”
That expert was James Conradt, aka Darth Husker.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
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At any rate, this article gives good advice. For any doubtful email - and certainly ALL of the loony stuff Obama's opponents spread around - I just check with www.Snopes.com. They do a good job of separating fact (and opinion) from malicious fiction. "
Pat wrote on July 20, 2008 7:35 am:
How do we know you really wrote this? Just kidding. Being older than God, I can say that we used to have a saying, "Don't believe everything you read." Haven't heard that one in a long time. Maybe we need to bring it back.
Good article, with one question. How do we teach kids to know or at least question what they read? I think most adults are onto the little clues that are so obvious, like little innocuous contradictions in an article, and things that are contrary to the motives of the subject of an article etc..
This is what I like about the Colbert Report. His satire is easy enough for my kids to see through - and seeing through the b.s. is a useful thing.
Thanks. "
Yoda wrote on July 20, 2008 7:36 am:
Shoot...guess I'll just have to go back to playing Powerball, at least all that money is used for good things in Nebraska. "
nemo wrote on July 20, 2008 9:32 am:
Long way of saying ... wrote on July 20, 2008 11:14 am:
gvlen wrote on July 20, 2008 12:15 pm:
reality bites wrote on July 20, 2008 1:17 pm:
Brian wrote on July 20, 2008 1:31 pm:
Harry the antenna guy wrote on July 20, 2008 3:19 pm:
Jeff wrote on July 20, 2008 7:29 pm:
Another example is the Christ conspiracy web sites - who quote a lot of facts about ancient pagan religions that simply are not true. They all have agendas, and talk a small amount of truth, mix it with some coincidental facts, and weave some outright lies in with it - and create a slick web page that looks like the gospel truth. "
nemo wrote on July 20, 2008 10:18 pm:
WCG wrote on July 21, 2008 6:55 am:
McCain's so old that there is nothing new to create. "
Nina wrote on July 21, 2008 10:10 am:
mark wrote on July 21, 2008 2:06 pm: