Debunking Internet hoaxes and scams

I’m quoted in today’s Chicago Tribune in Maureen Ryan’s article, Did you hear the one about men hunting women with paintballs? Lead:

The story had sex, violence and, well, more sex. In other words, the “Hunting for Bambi” controversy was a dream come true for the news media and outraged commentators. Too bad it was a scam.

Because this is as much a story about the recurring phenomenon of Internet hoaxes as it is about the Bambi incident, here are some observations I sent along to the Tribune’s reporter:

A week doesn’t go by that a relative or friend doesn’t send me an e-mail saying they had ‘heard this on the Internet’ and wondered if it was true. I finally put up a Web page to steer people to hoax-debunking sites that size up rumors that spread on the Net like an unchecked virus. For better or worse (and it’s clearly both), the Internet has become another news medium. And we’re still flummoxed about what and who we should trust online.

I’m always amazed at the credulity of people who tend to believe something just because they read it on the Internet. We need to fine-tune our BS meters by expressing skepticism each time we come across a far-out story from an unverified source. Over time, the Internet helps us develop reputation filters and circles of trust to help us filter out the nonsense.

Newspapers and television newscasts seem to be abdicating their traditional role of verifying the accuracy and truthfulness of certain stories, and that role has been taken over by a new breed of Web sites that specialize in debunking Internet hoaxes.

For a story like Hunting for Bambi, a story editor at a newspaper or TV station tends to see it as a soft-news feature, a story about what a wacky world we live. They won’t commit the resources to tracking down its truthfulness because it’s too good to pass up and they don’t believe the subject matter warrants serious treatment.

But for Snopes, Urban Legends and other hoax-buster sites, they’re in the business of tracking down the credibility of this story. In the years to come, they’ll play an increasingly important role in the media landscape.

Some last thoughts:

Two weeks after 9/11, my niece received an email from a friend’s aunt’s boyfriend, calling for a nationwide boycott of Dunkin Donuts. The basis? The supposed existence of a video showing the Arab owners of a Dunkin Donuts franchise in Lyndhurst, N.J., cheering the attack on the World Trade Center, a supposed sighting of the owner of a Dunkin Donuts store in Cedar Grove, N.J., burning the American flag, and a customer who allegedly saw a U.S. flag on the floor covered with Arabic writing in a Dunkin Donuts store in Little Falls, N.J. I told my niece the stories were obvious fabrications at a time when terrorist jitters and a hint of xenophobia were in the air.

In this age of lightning-speed hoaxes, I’d like to see newspapers and magazines publish a recurring ‘reality check’ column. Report on the rumors floating around cyberspace, their genesis, and their level of truthfulness or fabrication.

Later: Ken reminds us to Check Your Hoax-o-Meter.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.