At least with print media we could separate People Magazine`s headlines from more reputable publications at the newsstand. The Internet offers us no such filters.
Does the name Andrew Carlssin ring any bells? If it does, you were probably one of the thousands of Internet users who encountered an article published by Yahoo about this man`s claims to be a time traveller.
The story went something like this: Having invested only $800 in the stock market in December 2002, Carlssin made an absolute fortune and was arrested for insider trading. Questioned by the FBI, Carlssin confessed to his astonished interrogators that he was a time traveller from the future and had used his knowledge of the stock market to make this enormous profit. The poor guy was apparently rotting in a cell on Rikers Island until he could spin a more believable yarn.
While some people proved that years of online tomfoolery have taught them some lessons, there were plenty blathering idiots forwarding the mail with absolute conviction in its veracity. But it was easy enough to prove this story was a fake.
The first question that anyone should ask when confronted with a suspect piece of journalism is: "Is it 1 April?" Astonishingly enough, there are those out there for whom this date still sets off no warning bells, and they will lap up, enthusiastically, any nonsense they are dished under the guise of that day`s news. This story holds up under date scrutiny, however, having been published on 19 March. A large number of people only received a forwarded version of this story on 1 April, and dismissed it immediately, but it was definitely in circulation prior to that date.
People are taken in every day by articles published on The Onion, the Net`s best-known spoof news site.
Georgina Guedes, journalist, ITWeb
The second question that should be asked is: "What was the source?" People are taken in every day by articles published on The Onion, the Net`s best-known spoof news site, where fabricated quotes are republished as spoken word and nonsense news is touted as gospel. But in the case of the time traveller, you don`t really get much more reputable than Yahoo.com. More determined sleuths would have noted, however, that at the bottom of the story, Yahoo credited another source, the Weekly World News.
And there`s the rub. The Weekly World News is an Onion-like site that`s gravity is indicated by its agony aunt column, Advice from Psychic Serena. This week`s lead story announces, "Archaeologist discovers the lost arms of the Venus de Milo", which gives some idea of the kind of baloney the site produces.
Carlssin`s story was a harmless and fairly amusing one, but it is only one of many pieces of ridiculous drivel we get e-mailed daily by sensation pushers. Help to stop the escalating nonsense mill by asking a few pertinent questions the next time you receive a mail about something that "really happened to a friend of my sister".
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