Paul Dumoulin
CS 312
Dr. Wolf
Chapter 33: False Reporting on the Internet and the Spread of Rumors:
Three Case Studies
The article “False Reporting on the Internet and the Spread of Rumors: Three
Case Studies” was written by Paul Hitlin in two thousand four. The focus of the article is
on how the internet acts as a catalyst for unsubstantiated news stories, and it examines
three instances of this. He examines internet rumors that surrounded the crash of TWA
Flight 800, white house special assistant Sidney Blumenthal, and Bill Clinton aide Vince
Foster.
Hitlin starts of by arguing that rumors which surround tragic events often occur
because the public wants to makes sense of a seemingly random and tragic event. He
states that the internet has allowed the new process to be a much more open one that
allows a greater number of people “to become involved with the production and
dissemination of news” 1(Hitlin, 155). It is difficult to define the term journalist when it
is applied to a free-lance, often partisan, internet reporter. The scale and importance of
this problem on the internet is best summed up by Hitlin when he observes that “public
opinion can often be influenced as much from rumors on sites with little credibility as it
can from more mainstream sources” 1(Hitlin, 156). Error correction is another major
shortcoming of internet reporting. He claims that errors in an internet news report are
often disseminated and spread before they can be detected and corrected 1(Hitlin, 155).
Hitlin cites four main reasons for errors in cyber-journalism. Firstly is the “need
for speed”. The constant availability of internet news creates a demand all day; writing
news stores online is not a day long endeavor like it is in newspapers. The desire to
