The Internet is wonderful and hazardous, all at once
Last June 6, Time magazine used the power of the Internet to explain how an authenticlooking copy of the magazine, floating around the web for years, was really a hoax. Under the headline “Sorry, a Time Magazine Cover Did Not Predict a Coming Ice Age,” one of Time’s senior editors, Bryan Walsh, explained that while fake Time covers often “show up in protest crowds, movies, TV shows and on the web,” this one was different.
“Ads, jokes and protests are one thing,” he wrote. “Hoax covers are something else entirely. And that’s the problem with a faked Time cover about global warming that’s been floating around the Internet for some time.” What was justifiably upsetting Time was the doctoring of an original cover portraying a penguin atop an snowy mound with the printed message underneath: “The Global Warming Survival Guide — 51 things you can do to make a difference.”
The doctored version finding a life of its own on the Internet had simply changed the printed message to read “How To Survive The Coming Ice Age.” That being a complete reversal of Time’s belief in global warming was understandably upsetting for the magazine’s editors. Senior editor Walsh had high praise for the technical skills of whoever doctored the original and posted the phoney on the web, but urged readers to ignore the hoax, to “pay no attention” to fake Time covers. “It’s the science we should heed,” he wrote. “And the science says manmade climate change is real, and very, very worrying.”
And indeed it is. But surely what is equally worrying is the ease with which experts can falsify and distribute false information disguised as coming from an authentic publication. It surprised me that Time gave praise to the skills of those who faked and distributed worldwide the cover page, which was designed to embarrass the magazine and mislead readers, but had nothing to say about the immorality of the action itself.
Time was embarrassed by the fraudulent cover but offered no warning of the greater danger of the cyber beast racing unchecked around the world — and welcomed by millions who believe free speech includes the right to cheat, make false declarations and con the uneducated, elderly or easily deceived masses. The deceptions do not have to be huge, as political and religious leaders well know. Little “white lies” on the Internet, sometimes launched as bad jokes, can be highly persuasive and cruelly repeated.
On July 25 the Times Colonist — and most other daily newspapers in Canada — published a mini-feature story on world leaders who now use Twitter, one of the leaders in back-fence Internet social gossip, to communicate with the masses who “follow” them. The list is impressive and graced with such luminaries as U.S. President Barack Obama with 33.5 million followers; recently elected Pope Francis with more than twice as many; Russian leader Vladimir Putin is snapping at their heels; while our own Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes 38th on the world leader list of Twitterers — with only a modest 357,000 “followers.”
What was far more fascinating than the size of Harper’s Twitter audience was a footnote reading: “Although the [Harper] tweets are written in the first person, he rarely writes the tweets himself.” It’s a safe bet that Obama, Putin and the Pope also have ghost writers attending to their easily excited “followers” who actually believe they’ve just had a friendly, personal, gossip with Putin or the Pope — or, praise be, the notoriously un-communicative Stephen Harper.
If I sound fearful of the Internet, with its incredible flow of once-unattainable information and its tsunami flood of disinformation and dangerous innuendo, I am. If I sound concerned about its wide-open accessibility to people who can pay communications experts to tweet in their name, or skilled technicians who can fake a Time cover and content while on their lunch break, indeed I am.
A short time ago, following a crash landing by an Asiana passenger aircraft, a press release was issued “naming” the four pilots at the controls when disaster struck. The release was handed to a charming anchor lady who in a serious voice read the four names with a hint of pride as to how clever her station was in bringing this information to their attention. She appeared totally unaware that all four names, with their phonetic locker-room racist overtones, were obviously phoney. Apologies and lawsuit threats followed.
More recent was a request by the venerable BBC to readers who may have witnessed a horrendous train crash in Spain to forward their eyewitness stories and any photographs they may have taken. The request, made after most major disaster reports, fits well with those who believe we have all become journalists overnight; who believe no checks and balances are required when it comes to reporting of events.
It doesn’t sit well with old codgers like me brought up with the maxim: “Get it first, get it fast. But first, get it right.”