False Reporting on the Internet and the Spread of Rumors: Three Case Studies
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False Reporting on the Internet and the Spread of Rumors: Three Case Studies Paul Hitlin Communication, Culture and Technology Program Georgetown University Published by gnovis, the peer-reviewed journal of Communication, Culture and Technology - gnovis.georgetown.edu Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, a significant number of unsubstantiated rumors circulated around the Internet. One email pointed to the existence of prophecies by Nostradamus written hundreds of years earlier that predicted the attacks. Another accused Israel of masterminding the strikes and that thousands of Jews were told in advance to stay home from work that morning. The Internet allowed for a vast audience to spread these rumors along with the technology to facilitate their transmission, even though there was little evidence to support them and the rumors were later proven incorrect. Considering this spread of rumors, Stephen O’Leary (2002) writes: What may be hard for mainstream journalists to understand is that, in crisis situations, the social functions of rumor are virtually indistinguishable from the social functions of ‘real news.’ People spread rumors via the Net for the same reason that they read their papers or tune into CNN: they are trying to make sense of their world. (pg. 3) O’Leary claims that these rumors fill a need for consumers of news that is very similar to the void that ‘real news’ fills. However, are the consequences the same? These Internet rumors help people to make sense of their world following a tragedy, although the lasting consequences are potentially much more harmful. The Internet is certainly not responsible for errors in journalism. Every medium of news has a history of misreported stories. However, the nature of the Internet has created a new method for consumers to get their news and allowed for far greater numbers of people to become involved with the production and dissemination of news. As a consequence, cyberjournalism and the Internet have had real effects on both the process of reporting and subsequent public discourse. How are errors in Internet journalism corrected online? What are the overarching 2 consequences of errors that appear on Internet web sites? Jim Hall (2001) believes that one problem with instant news appearing on the Internet is that the way errors are handled does not adequately address the fact that an error was made. He writes, “The problem with instant news is that when it is wrong it tends to be buried, sedimenting into and reinforcing its context, rather than corrected” (p. 133). Errors of Internet reporting do not often get identified and corrected as they do in newspapers. Instead, even if the editors of the Web site where the error first appeared change their site to remove the error, often the same false information will have already spread throughout other Web sites and emails. These rumors can become part of a public folklore even if there are no facts to support the original reports. This paper will first consider Hall’s assertion that errors are buried rather than corrected, and will examine the reasons Internet reporting leads to false reports. Then, three case studies of significant false reports on the Internet will be compared to the theories behind cyberjournalism in order to understand why the errors occurred and the impacts of these stories. Investigating these three examples will help us to begin to understand how we can decrease the influence of false reports in the future. The first case study is the plane crash of TWA flight 800 in 1996. Even before full investigations were conducted, the Internet was full of reports of missiles or other causes behind the crash, the impacts of which would reach as far as the White House. The second case study will examine Matt Drudge’s report that former White House special assistant Sidney Blumenthal physically abused his wife. The third case study will take a look at the pervasive rumors that the death of former Bill Clinton aide Vince Foster was a murder, not a suicide, even though numerous investigations have concluded that these accusations are unsupported. This incident is 3 a clear example of how partisan politics can play a role in the spread of false reports on the Internet. There has been much discussion about what distinguishes a ‘journalist’ working for a mainstream news source from a self-titled ‘reporter’ who never leaves his/her computer and instead just links to reports on other sites. While these distinctions are important and worth discussing, it will not be within the realm of this study to draw out these distinctions. Instead, this paper will consider news reports that appear on the Internet regardless of whether or not the site displaying the report considers itself a news source. As we will see, public opinion can often be influenced as much from rumors on sites with little credibility as it can from more mainstream sources. Reasons for Cyberjournalism Errors Before considering the specific cases of false reporting, it is important to understand why the nature of the Internet may encourage reporting errors. Philip Seib (2001) points out that the Internet is not alone in containing factual errors. He writes, “the Web really is little different from other media in terms of its potential to abuse and be abused and its capability for self- governance” (pp. 129 - 130). The Internet itself, the actual technology, can not be held responsible for false reports since those reports have existed in all forms of media. However, there are qualities of the Internet and the manner in which news is reported on the Web that create differences in how frequently errors appear and what results as a consequence. The causes of most cyberjournalism errors can be separated into four main categories. Let us now turn to each cause and examine it in turn. 4 1. The Need for Speed The first and probably most significant reason for false reporting on the Internet is the 24- hour a day news cycle that the Internet promotes. With the development of newspapers, the news cycle was a daylong process that ended with having a story included in the next day’s edition of the paper. This cycle changed with the expansion of cable television channels devoted entirely to news such as CNN and later MSNBC and Fox News. The cycle was expanded even further by the development of the Internet which is available to consumers 24-hours a day. Because of the constant need to keep both cable television and the Internet supplied with new information, expectations of news deadlines have shifted. As Seib notes, in the current information age, the deadline for reporters is always ‘now’ (p. 142). Competitive pressures have also contributed to an emphasis being placed more on timeliness than accuracy. A number of Internet sites, such as Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report, are one-person operations that issue reports on gossip and rumor without being constrained by traditional standards of reporting. These sites apply pressure to other news organizations to be the first to report a story or risk being scooped. Drudge himself believes that “absolute truth matters less than absolute speed” (Seib, 2001, p. 143). He also suggests that since we live in an information economy, complete accuracy is not possible or even necessary. Drudge focuses instead on immediacy and believes that the Web encourages this type of reporting (Hall, 2002, p. 148). The pressure on reporters to be the first with a story has detracted from more traditional methods of journalism. Because the goal used to be to get a report into the next day’s newspaper 5 or that evening’s nightly news television broadcast, reporters had more time for fact-checking. The 24-hour-a-day news cycle has decreased the time reporters have to assure accuracy and as a result, many errors found on the Internet can be attributed to the competitive pressure for journalists to be the first to break a specific news story. 2. The Desire to Attract ‘Hits’ Competition among Web sites is also a cause for some false reports. Web sites have financial incentives to attract visitors to their sites, whether it is through advertising or a desire to widen the site’s influence. Hall argues that journalism on the Web has promoted the idea that news is ‘infotainment’ and more at the mercy of the demands of the marketplace than to its audiences (Hall, 2001, p. 155). Web sites must fill the desires of consumers, or risk losing those consumers to other sites that either get the information first or are even more sensational in their reporting. Furthermore, with the ability of Internet users to visit almost any news source in the world, as opposed to being confined to their local newspapers or television stations, the competition on the Web exacerbates the desire of sites to get the story first. Most news sites are updated several times a day, and competition forces those sites to get the story first or risk being thought of as irrelevant or out-of-date. 3. Political Gains The specific source of many Internet rumors is often difficult to ascertain. However, certain rumors on the Internet are clearly promoted for partisan political gain and to advance a 6 particular ideology. Even after four investigations came to the same conclusions about Vince Foster’s death, certain political groups were still spreading false reports in order to promote their own cause. For example, a fund-raising letter sent out by anti-Clinton groups asked for $1,000 donations in order to support the “Clinton Investigation Commission” which would investigate the claim that Foster was murdered (Piacente, 1997).