Craig Silverman, a longtime chronicler of media misinformation, has created a real-time rumor tracker called Emergent.info. Brooke talks with Craig about the life cycle of rumors and how news outlets handle debunking them.
On The Media is funded, in part, by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Overbrook Foundation and the Jane Marcher Foundation.
Comments [6]
Sorry that should read "may not play outside UK". I think it does but not all of Radio 4's stuff will.
You may be interested in this bit of psychological research. It looked into why people find it hard to accept corrections to information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p41hq
(audio, listen from about 13:20, may play outside UK)
Please note the bookmark for the item "Misinformation" is in the wrong place. It's set to 9 mins something so you'll still have a few minutes of the previous item if you it.
Nice to see two others spotted the error Muslim Obama McCain Correction error. Nice work Messrs Ed and Steitz. The AP provides footage of the incident here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrnRU3ocIH4. I hope On the Media issues a correction posthaste.
On your story about the false rumor of the woman who elected to have a third breast placed on her body in the hopes of landing a reality TV show, your guest said "You could imagine different viewpoints being grafted onto this fake story…" Grafted? Pun intended?
Not to put too fine an edge on this, but the REAL exchange was not the woman saying Obama is a Muslim, she said that he's an Arab
Mr. Silverman stated that, in the 2008 campaign, McCain's response to the crazy woman saying Obama was a Muslim was to state that Obama was indeed a Christian. Wrong. He said, "No 'Mam, he's a good man." What a perfectly nefarious and clever response - McCain was off the hook from joining the tinfoil-hat crowd, but didn't have to contradict the premise that being a Muslim would be unbecoming a presidential candidate, if it were true.
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