Apologies for another five minute pass-it-along post, but I just read this eye opener about the power of the web while eating lunch. You may have heard the rumor yesterday that Chief Justice John Roberts was resigning for health reasons. The rumor first went public in a post at Radar Online at 9:10AM EST. It was retracted later that morning, but by then it was off and running. It now turns out that the rumor began with a law school classroom exercise in the importance of credible sources. At 9:00AM, a professor at Georgetown started the rumor by telling a ’secret’ to his class of first year students, purely to illustrate a point. Thirty minutes later, at 9:30AM, he revealed to them that it was purely an exercise. Too late. By then it had been texted and Tweeted to the world. Scary.
Posted on March 5th, 2010 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Rants and Musings
I worry about passing along stuff like this and make myself promises to verify, verify, verify. And then I forget. Or my eyes start to burn from staring at the screen. When I make that inevitable error, please straighten me out, internets!
How interesting to see how quickly it spread, that is amazing.