Lies That Won’t Die
We’ve all heard it: If you read it on the Internet, it must be true. I’ve been sucked in by it, even, though I’d like to think I at least admitted my folly and set things right when I repeated something false.
This week I have seen more lies spewed across the Internet and claimed as truth than I care to admit. No matter how many times they’re proven false, people read it, believe it, post it in comments on newspaper articles, and send it in email.
Sometimes journalists take quotes and twist them up into lies. This week’s victim is Bill Clinton. ABC Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper, reporting on Clinton’s speech in Denver, took this line out of context:
And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.
and reported it this way:
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.” At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?
Read the entire Clinton statement in context here.
Now of course, the Tapper version has been grabbed by Drudge and the other intellectually dishonest bloggers out there who don’t really care about the facts and is being reported as fact.
For the record, here are some of the current lies flying around the Internet and links to the facts:
- Lie: Barack Obama is a Muslim who was sworn in on a copy of the Quran and refuses to salute the flag.
Truth: Barack Obama is a Christian who was sworn in on a Bible and not only salutes the flag, but leads the pledge of allegiance before opening sessions of the Senate committee he chairs. (link and link) - Lie: Barack Obama represented Tony Rezko.
Truth: Barack Obama worked for a law firm representing community groups working with Rezko on several deals. (Link) - Lie: If it’s published on the Internet, it must be true.
Truth: Most of what you read on blogs is opinion, not truth. This blog is opinion, not truth. I can back it up with sources, but it’s still my personal opinion and should not be viewed as truth. Even respected journalists misreport what they hear, presumably unintentionally. On the internet, where anyone can publish anything anonymously and without accountability, reasonable people investigate and check their facts against primary sources where possible. Smear emails and anonymous comments on newspaper sites are not fact, not verifiable, and are exactly the kind of political distraction that people like George Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney rely on to mislead and deny.
It’s tempting to blame the opposing campaign for the anonymous comments spreading the first two lies I enumerated above, but I don’t think so. Based on what I’ve seen in the past on CNN’s community (where I worked for awhile), I’d say that the lies about religion and patriotism bubble up and are spread by the secret racists who dwell across this country, the fearmongers, and the extreme paranoids who skulk out onto the Internet and use people like Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh to perpetuate their myths, but that’s just my OPINION, based on prior experience. I have no evidence, so don’t go hunting down the KKK. Besides, you won’t find them. The spreaders of these lies prey on the ignorance of the body politic, they ask us to believe simply because they said it. Because they said it. They assume their audience is stupid. Are we? I say no.
This is part of the change that I think needs to happen in this country. And this is the time. I cannot remember a time where people have been as engaged in the political process this early and it’s really incumbent upon all of us not to accept rumor as truth, but to investigate at the source and get the real facts. Today the victims are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Tomorrow they might be YOU.
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