Web hoax fools news media
Boy is it ironic that the faked beheading story reported internationally Saturday was made by three Bay Area residents as an experiment to find out how quickly erroneous information could be spread by the Internet.
The answer: way too fast. True, the grainy video was originally uploaded online in May (to two file- sharing sites, Soulseek and Kazaa). But once it hit the mainstream, it rippled across the media. Soon after it appeared on Islamic-minbar.com, the video was picked up by the Associated Press, Reuters and two Middle Eastern television broadcasters. Before long, it was all over online news sites and spread to radio and TV across the globe.
The carries many lessons.
Just because information -- in this case, the video made by three San Francisco residents -- is posted on a site that previously published accurate info, that doesn't mean everything it publishes in the future will be reliable. The Arabic Islamic-minbar.com had posted communiqués from Islamic radical groups and videos of previous beheading victims.
If you can't verify info, it's best not to publish until you can. If you chose to do so, be very explicit that the information wasn't independently verified. AP usually does so, but none of the first four stories the Associated Press transmitted to its members carried that caveat. Associated Press Deputy Managing Editor Tom Kent could not explain why the disclaimer had not been added earlier, but told the San Francisco Chronicle that the story had been published before it could be verified "because in this case, everything was just happening fast and furious...."
Don't publish something just because everything is "just happening fast and furious."
One of the film's authors, 20-year-old Laurie Kirchner, summed it up best when she said, ""What is amazing is the power of the Internet. One person gets the file, they share it with someone else. It eventually ends up on some Arab TV station and is believed as the real thing."
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