May 1, 1995: Headlines: COS - Panama: Journalism: Colombia : Panama RPCV Charley Stough, a copy editor at the Dayton Daily News and respected Internet buff who publishes an on-line newsletter, was one of the few to follow up on the student's Internet message

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Panama: Peace Corps Panama : The Peace Corps in Panama: May 1, 1995: Headlines: COS - Panama: Journalism: Colombia : Panama RPCV Charley Stough, a copy editor at the Dayton Daily News and respected Internet buff who publishes an on-line newsletter, was one of the few to follow up on the student's Internet message

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-115-42.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.115.42) on Monday, May 31, 2004 - 1:35 pm: Edit Post

Panama RPCV Charley Stough, a copy editor at the Dayton Daily News and respected Internet buff who publishes an on-line newsletter, was one of the few to follow up on the student's Internet message



Panama RPCV Charley Stough, a copy editor at the Dayton Daily News and respected Internet buff who publishes an on-line newsletter, was one of the few to follow up on the student's Internet message

cyberhoax!

by David Armstrong
Armstrong is a reporter for The Boston Globe.

There is something incredibly seductive about information that shows up on a computer screen. As a lot of journalists discovered after the Oklahoma City bombing, it can make gullible neophytes out of people who should be professional skeptics.

On April 20, only one day after the blast, this inflammatory message appeared on an Internet newsgroup identified as a site used by militia groups: "If this turns out to be a bomb, expect them to tie it to the militia . . . . I have expected this to come before now. I will lodge a prediction here. They will try to tie it to Waco, Janet Reno is behind this, the campaign will succeed because the media will persuade the public. Expect a crackdown. Bury your guns and use the codes."

The comment was quoted in Newsday, The Dallas Morning News, USA Today, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, the Houston Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and others. Many of the articles cited it as evidence of hate groups and extremists using the Internet to communicate and spread their message.

But the posting was a joke, the work of a University of Montana journalism student who was mimicking the rhetoric and antics of militia members.

Two days later, with Timothy McVeigh in custody as a suspect in the bombing, a message from a Tim McVeigh, describing himself as the "Mad Bomber," was discovered on the commercial America Online service. The message, in the form of a user profile, which members use to introduce themselves to other members, included the quote: "Let us take back the government . . . or die trying. Boom."

Dateline NBC, which discovered the profile minutes before deadline, was the first to report on the America Online message. Reuters briefly picked up the story, citing NBC, before moving another story that exposed the profile as a hoax. In Great Britain, newspapers went wild. A headline in the Sunday Mirror shouted, hello, i'm the mad bomber . . . boom!; sick message flashed worldwide; okla- homa bomb suspect leaves message on internet.

If re-porters checked, America Online in- formed them that the Mc-Veigh profile was created after Timothy McVeigh was arrested and was an obvious prank. America Online sent out a press release the day after the NBC report warning that the McVeigh profile was bogus.

The lesson, according to on-line experts and journalists, is not that the Internet is inherently bad or inaccurate (although it can be both), but that reporters wading into new technological waters have to apply the same skepticism and reporting tools used in the non-computer world.

"There are a lot of similarities to reporting in the physical world," said Timothy Maloy, editor of the Internet Newsroom newsletter. "News sources have to be verified in the traditional way." This can be difficult, however, since anyone delivering a message, posting, or other "signed" note on the Internet can easily do so with an unverifiable pseudonym.

Adam Gaffin, the on-line editor of Network World, was one of the many journalists who failed to check the accuracy or authenticity of the comments posted by the Montana student pretending to be an enraged militia member. In retrospect, Gaffin said there were several ways to try to verify the authenticity of the posting.

Charley Stough, a copy editor at the Dayton Daily News and respected Internet buff who publishes an on-line newsletter, was one of the few to follow up on the student's Internet message. He sent the student an e-mail message, asking if he would speak to a reporter. The student responded that he was only doing some on-line kidding, Stough says.

For on-line veterans like Stough, the Oklahoma experience was sobering. "The expression that on the Internet no one knows if you are a dog," he says, "was never truer than when you take something off a newsgroup and hang it on tens of thousands of newspapers."



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Story Source: Colombia

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Panama; Journalism

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