Since the Stone Age, humans have indulged in gossip. Now the Internet is taking hearsay global at light speed,, shaking up the media and blurring fact and fiction like never before.
The Internet has come to embody a global-communications revolution. But at the same time, this erstwhile harbinger of a new era in human history also has revitalized one of the human race's most ancient vices -- the tendency to engage in spreading rumors. Some of the dubious reports on the Internet sound plausible, others sound fantastic, but all race around the globe at the speed of light -- something rumor spreaders, gossips and scandalmongers of the past only could imagine.
The current menu of rumor, gossip and conspiracy is huge. Conspiracy Nation, a periodical devoted to disseminating conspiracy theories, has a large World Wide Web site that allows afficionados listening for the whir of satanic wings to debate the merits of various alleged plots by nefarious corporate and government entities. A recent one explored the new world order's efforts to clone new humans, and site creator Michael Rivero's page lets viewers download videotape of a suicide to facilitate debate about the death of former White House deputy counsel Vince Foster.
Other sites, whatever their merits, have attracted attention. Matt Drudge's Drudge Report on America Online (www.drudgereport.com) helped turn Washington upside down in January by revealing Newsweek's investigation into former White House intern Monica Lewinsky's alleged relationship with President Clinton. At the site of the Pittsburgh Post-Tribune's Christopher Ruddy (www.ruddynews.com), viewers are invited to examine pictures of late commerce secretary Ron Brown's head wound to spur debate about whether Brown was shot before his fatal plane crash. Ruddy also has posted "proof" that two different people wrote Foster's suicide note.
Not that this should be too surprising. For millennia, every development in communications has meant the same thing. When new technology arrives, "people sometimes make this assumption that it's going to be pristine," Patricia Turner of the University of California at Davis tells Insight. "And human nature has a way of corrupting virtually everything we get our hands on."
Of course, the Internet offers advantages that reach beyond the speed of transmission. "People can disseminate information with more anonymity than they can in face-to-face contact," points out Turner, an academic expert on rumors. "For some people, that's more satisfying; for some people that's less satisfying."
Those who indulge in Internet gossip play different roles, suggests Ralph Rosnow, a Temple University psychologist and renowned expert on rumor. Some participate to spread rumor; others participate to quash it. And, in fact, the Clinton administration has held up enthusiastic online Clinton-bashing in order to tar independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigations. And even conservatives such as Joseph C. Goulden, director of media analysis for Accuracy in Media, say the Internet "lets paranoids get out of the house and talk in the street." His press watchdog group receives numerous calls whenever a new rumor hits the Net -- such as the recent allegation that the president has a significant financial interest in all the major U.S. media outlets.
The affinity for using the Internet to spread rumors can backfire even on those who make information their business. In June 1996, the Lexis-Nexis electronic library, which contains 1 billion documents, stopped including Social Security numbers as part of a new database called P-Trak, which provided addresses and phone numbers for virtually every American. The action followed an uproar sparked by reports on C/Net, a San Francisco on-line news service. But the rumor mill was just beginning to grind on the matter. By early September, erroneous messages about P-Trak -- referring to it as "P-Trak" -- began appearing on the Internet, accusing Lexis-Nexis of selling medical and credit histories. The entirely false story garnered a barrage of negative publicity for Lexis-Nexis, which by most accounts is a superbly professional service.
In that case, an understandable and prevalent fear of encroachment on privacy was at work. But, in fact, the people who promote rumors, speculation and half-truths on the information superhighway are motivated by a variety of reasons. For some it is ideology; others chase money or notoriety.
But, as the recent turmoil about alleged White House sex scandals and cover-ups indicates, consumers of online gossip include both the alienated and the well-connected. For some, the information superhighway is a path out of the murkiness they see enveloping government and the media; others see the highway as one more corridor to prestige and power.
This was apparent in Washington where the Drudge Report -- produced by the man the New York Times described as "the country's reigning mischief maker and proprietor of a one-man Internet gossip column" -- turned White House press coverage upside down. According to the Times, Drudge's daily reports have become "must reading for journalists, film-studio executives and politicos on both coasts." In June 1997, Drudge had 60,000 e-mail bulletins, and tens of thousands more are estimated to visit his Web site. After observing the media frenzy ignited by Drudge, Leonard Larsen, a conservative-leaning syndicated columnist, acidly commented that "it would seem that sifting through a daily dump of raw garbage has become an important method for news gathering in the era of instant communication on the World Wide Web."
While some denounce Drudge as a purveyor of "electronic graffiti;'many Washington reporters have monitored his site since the Lewinsky report. Drudge even appeared on Meet the Press, the venerable bastion of establishment Washington punditry. "I think it was hysterical to see him in the mainstream media at the same time that they were denouncing him," says Turner. In fact, having granted the dishevelled Drudge the imprimatur of a national TV appearance, fellow panelists began to distance themselves almost immediately, she points out. "You had the feeling the poor guy hadn't left the green room."
And Drudge has made life for his critics rather easy. Before the Lewinsky revelations, his brightest moment in the Washington spotlight had occurred when he reported that newly appointed White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime political journalist with close personal ties to the first couple, had a record as a "spousal abuser" that had been "covered up" by the Clinton administration. The report turned out to have no basis in fact and Blumenthal filed a lawsuit against Drudge and America Online.
"Don't shoot, I'm just a reporter," Drudge has said, defending his material, which he estimates is 80 percent accurate, according to reports.
But, being online magnifies the 20 percent inaccuracy. Goulden, who likens the Internet to a gaggle of old women jabbering in the marketplace, says the cyber beast has "made reporters more eager to get things out," often rushing on the air or into print before all the facts are in. Case in point: While Starr was taking depositions, the Wall Street Journal first released and then pulled a Web story about alleged sightings of Clinton and Lewinsky in a compromising position. Predictably, White House press spokesman Mike McCurry blamed the snafu on daily journalists "reporting hour-by-hour, not giving the White House any chance to assemble any facts and respond."
Certainly the allure of the quick scoop makes Internet journalism appealing to many news people. Indeed, Scripps-Howard media columnist Terry Mattlingly has suggested that the competition provided by online journalism may revitalize small-market newspapers. But what editors regard as discretion reporters sometimes regard as suppression. And the Internet complicates things further.
"Ready, fire, aim is what they call it," says Goulden. This was obvious with the Lewinsky story Newsweek had decided not to publish Michael Isikoff 's story about the ex-intern, but it appeared on the Drudge Report. Goulden says he suspects that someone at Newsweek said, "The hell with the editors -- let's get it out there." Reporters impatient to get their stories past cautious editors may find leaking to the Internet a useful source of pressure.
This has been a not-so-secret fear of the White House, whose 1995 controversial 331-page report, The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce, states that "the right wing has seized upon the Internet as a means of communicating its ideas to people." But it is not just the right wing. The outside-the-Beltway gossip consumers who gulp down online reports about politicians differ in political outlook, but they feel alienated from what they sense as the powers-that-be in society.
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