Let the Reader Beware

The admonition “don’t believe everything you read” has been an American staple for at least 100 years at this point; its roots run back into such evergreen legends of our culture as William Randolph Hearst’s famous telegram “you furnish the photographs, I’ll furnish the war!” In modern times we have had to deal with both deliberate misquotes (Al Gore never actually claimed to have invented the Internet) and complete fabrications (such as the supposed “Kenyan Birth Certificate” belonging to our current President – which turned out to be a badly Photoshopped version of an Australian birth certificate, and was a huge surprise to the Australian man whose birth certificate it actually was!), both of which are made worse by the existence of the Internet. The current equivalent, “You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet,” is no longer a cynical commentary on the scruples (or lack thereof) possessed by newspaper publishers, but more of a simple statement of fact…

Take, for example, the much-quoted and often-blogged case of the 14-year-old hip-hop pioneer who was cheated out of most of her earnings by a crooked record company but got revenge by making them pay for her college education, all of the way through her Ph.D. (variously reported as $200,000, $250,000 and $350,000 in tuition). It’s a heart-warming story, both because it tells the tale of a young woman escaping crushing poverty and achieving a respected place in the world, and also because it tells the tale of an evil, greedy corporation (no doubt run by evil, greedy white men) getting its comeuppance for trying to cheat said plucky, accomplished young woman. The problem is that the whole thing is a complete fabrication…

The story about the story first broke in Slate.com, but has now been picked up by a number of other news organs as well. It turns out that the artist in our story never had a contract with Warner Music Group, that Warner Music has never signed a contract of the type described in the original article with anybody, and the young woman in question does not have a doctorate in anything OR a license to practice as a Psychologist or anything else. It accomplished the 21st Century equivalent of selling newspapers (generating web page hits, blogs and tweets) but otherwise has no excuse for existing in the first place. Except, perhaps, as a clear warning that believing everything you read is just as unwise as it ever was…

I mention this, not because I believe that any of my readers (assuming I have readers) is about to fall for any of the Nigerian bank fraud scams, or anything equally stupid, but rather because of this story which appeared on the Internet on the same day as the Slate piece debunking the “rapper’s revenge” story. It’s a highly incendiary account of the President of Iran and his “chief spiritual advisor” giving a press conference about how the use of torture and rape, in particular, on political dissidents and other prisoners is not only okay, but condoned by Islam and will bring great rewards to those who do it properly. All of this would be much more upsetting, however, if the news agency making the report wasn’t the INN; the Israeli News Network…

Now, I certainly don’t mean to impugn the integrity of the INN, or suggest that this story isn’t accurate; I’m just pointing out that all of the sources they quote in the article are Israeli news agencies and intelligence groups, and that all of these entities have a vested interest in making the current Iranian regime look as horribly evil as possible. This story could be absolutely correct, with all of the quotes translated verbatim from the original and fully documented, and anyone who is less than completely pro-Israeli (or less than completely anti-Iranian) might still find it difficult to believe. Which is kind of the point of this current rant: in the Internet age, it isn’t wise to automatically believe OR disbelieve anything you read without checking your sources (and those used to write the story); the traditional warning of “Let the buyer beware” has become “Let the reader beware…”