Theos-Talk Archives (November 1996 Message tl00243)

Interesting article in the *distorted* news media.  From an article in
the San Francisco Examiner-Salinger stung by TWA tip on Net (regarding
ABC newsman Pierre Salinger's claim that he located a document that
reported the U.S. Navy being responsible for the July 17 explosion of
TWA Flight 800):
*America is awash in a growing and often disruptive avalanche of false
information that takes on a life of its own in the electronic ether of
the Internet, talk radio and voice mail until it becomes impervious to
denial and debunking.

**There is a very strong strain of media populism because of the
Internet in today's society, and people grasp for these false stories
because they think the Internet can be trusted more than can the major
institutions of America,** said Bernard Beck, associate professor of
sociology at Northwestern University.*...*The social scientist noted
that before Salinger's embarrassing Internet interlude, the most recent
outbreak of the phenomenon had been the widespread belief, particularly
among African Americans, that the San Jose Mercury News had broken a
story that proved that the CIA had been involved in selling crack
cocaine in California inner-city neighborhoods as part of its efforts to
support the Nicaraguan contra rebels in the early 1980s.*...*The series
was then copied by a variety of political activists and widely reprinted
on the Internet, replete with claims that it was the proof of the
long-held suspicions among many people of government participation in
inner-city drug sales.*

TTT