eRumors Running Rampant on the Internet
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 -With the invention of the Internet comes eRumors-electronic scuttlebutt that multiplies exponentially with the help of quick taps on the computer’s mouse.
Rumor and urban legend are far older than the information revolution, but the high-speed performance of the World Wide Web makes it incredibly easy, not to mention fast, to spread rumors across not only a state but also the nation, if not the globe. Within minutes, rumors can fly from New York to California, Texas to Michigan, Kansas to Massachusetts. The rumors can then fall dormant, only to be recycled year after year, even if they lack timeliness or accuracy. And, of course, sometimes the rumors are true.
But ways to combat the spread of online gossip have also cropped up, as web sites have popped up that track and truth-test email exaggerations and fabrications.
One such site is www.truthorfiction.com , which former broadcaster Richard Buhler created in 1998. The Website’s stated intention is “to provide Internet users with a quick and easy way to check out the accuracy of forwarded e-mails.”
Another site intended to measure the accuracy of mass-forwarded e-mail messages is www.snopes.com . Barbara and David Mikkelson, who own and operate the site, write on their Web page: “Unlike the plethora of anonymous individuals who create and send the unsigned, unsourced e-mail messages that are forwarded all over the Internet, we show our work. The research materials we’ve used in the preparation of any particular page are listed in the bibliography displayed at the bottom of that page so that readers who wish to verify the validity of our information may check those sources for themselves.”
Neither site has lacked for work.
Both Snopes.com and Truthorfiction.com strike down the validity of a widespread military draft e-mail rumor. In the months before the Nov. 2 elections, an e-mail circulating on the Internet stated that on June 15, 2005, a mandatory draft would begin. “The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public’s attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately,” the e-mail said.
The email, however, has no signature, no one to contact to question its contents.
While the e-mail accurately real congressional bills that propose a draft, it did not note out that the bills had been buried in committees since 2003 and that Congress is highly unlikely to approve such legislation, as bothwww.snopes.com and www.truthorfiction.com stated.
Many times these forwarded e-mail messages cause a flood of people to contact their congressmen stating their opposition.
“Upon receiving calls, letters and/or e-mails, we research their context and content,” Congressman John F. Tierney, Salem-D, said on Wednesday. “As to the context, we assess whether the mass e-mails are based on a hoax-such as the supposed bill “602p” which allegedly called for a 5-cent per e-mail tax. ”
Snopes.com and truthorfiction.com both declared this rumor false, with truthorfiction.com adding, “This as not just a rumor, but a hoax, an intentional e-mail of misinformation.”
Similarly, both sites have looked into a controversial mass-forwarded e-mail involving the appointment and re-appointment of Dr. David Hager, a Kentucky obstetrician who opposes abortion, refused birth control pills to unmarried women and purportedly favors prayer and Scripture reading to cure menstrual pain, to the Food and Drug Administration’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee.
In the fall of 2002, Hager’s name was the subject of a widely-circulated, well-written, anonymous e-mail that outlined his positions. The aim of the e-mail was to keep Hager from serving on a committee that decides matters concerning birth control, fertility drugs and over-the-counter abortion drugs.
The message, which appears on the Web sites of the Society for Women’s Health Research and the Coalition of Labor Union Women, asserts that “Hager’s track record of using religious beliefs to guide his medical decision-making makes him a dangerous and inappropriate candidate to serve as chair of this committee.”
Erin Rowland, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, said her organization regularly receives the e-mail. “It started in 2002 when Dr. Hager was first rumored to be the new appointment to the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. He was [subsequently] nominated to be the chair,” Rowland said.
Rowland said she thought the e-mail was successful because Hager’s nomination as chairman was withdrawn, although he still serves on the committee.
When Hager was up for re-appointment to the committee in June 2004, the e-mail resurfaced in hundreds of e-mail inboxes.
Hager, who said in an interview on Wednesday that his life had been threatened as a result of the attacks made in the e-mail message, added: “What people believe is what they see on the Internet and hear in the media. I think people need to do more research when they come across these things.”
But Buhler, who has studied rumors for 30 years, said he was able to verify the email’s assertions Hager’s beliefs about birth control by using “a communication sent to us by Dr. Hager in 2003, when we inquired.”
Hager said of the e-mail attacks, “It’s not something that you try to go out and defend yourself on.”
While Truthorfiction.com and Snopes.com both stamped this mass forwarded e-mail as true, they were able to explain the nuances not elaborated on in the e-mail. Both stated that Hager said he does prescribe birth control pills to unmarried females and that he does not prescribe prayer and Scripture reading to females suffering from menstruation.
Buhler writes on his Web site that the Internet has been both the best and worst thing that has happened to rumors. Because of the rapid and rampant growth of rumors circulated through the Internet, he said the public is hearing and passing on more false rumors than ever. But there is also more information available to deflate false rumors.
“We’ve all had the experience of forwarding what we thought was a timely, interesting, funny or alarming e-mail, then feeling the sting of five or six replies telling us the story is hogwash,” Buhler wrote onwww.truthorfiction.com .
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