December 15, 2009

With all the noise out there, reader beware

Why would anyone write a blog?  As my old friend Chip might say were he asked that question today, that's a corking good question. Blogs, tweets, e-mails and any number of other innovations in the day of instant communications attract all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons.
In my case, I used to write a daily newspaper column and miss writing daily and the immediacy of reaching people with what's on my mind. Writing books, editing newsletters or other writing I do doesn't quite give me the satisfaction I felt from writing every day. While nobody may ever read this blog, there's a certain cathartic effect to putting the words on paper — it was the English novelist D.H. Lawrence who said, "One sheds one's sickness in the novel." So there's that aspect of writing.
And then there are all the half-truths and outright lies you find in your in-basket daily that you want to respond to the masses. Today, for example, I received a story with the following headline: "VERY QUIETLY OBAMA'S CITIZENSHIP CASE REACHES THE SUPREME COURT." The story purported to be an AP-datelined account from Washington about a non-existent group called  "Americans for Freedom of Information" that had released copies of President Obama's college transcripts from Occidental College, indicating that the president attended under the name Barry Soetoro and "received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia. ,,," Justice Antonin Scalia reportedly announced that the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments concerning Obama's legal eligibility to serve as president in a case brought by Leo Donofrio of New Jersey." Sounds ominous and foreboding, huh?
And questionable, too. So I checked Snopes, which indicates the story was false and originally filed with an AP deadline on April 1, 2009, April Fool's Day. For the rest of the story and the details, click here.
Snopes is touted as "the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors and misinformation." Quite a claim, but one that has a ring of truth to it, and that site is one place to check to see whether the tall tales sent out over the Internet are true or false. Next time you receive an e-mail that sounds phony, chances are it is. Check it out.

2 comments:

  1. I occasionally get some right-wing crap (lies) forwarded to me from a misguided friend, and several times I referred to to Snopes.com so she would see the error of her ways. Finally she forwarded me something about Snopes being merely a left wing nefarious plot and should be discredited. So I give up. : )

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  2. I used to try to write a weekly column when I was a newspaper reporter, and was amazed at how difficult it is to actually sit down and do it amid all the regular news/featuring writing I did. Even once a week seemed nearly impossible.

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