The World of Internet Misinformation

Over last weekend our beloved Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was raked over hot coals on the website Profootballtalk.com. Was he running a dog racing track like Michael Vick did? Was he texting sexually objectionable messages to a team reporter, as Brett Favre was reported to have done? No. He just refused to give one woman fan an autograph, in passing. For this he was called "arrogant and uncaring." The video clip and accompanying message went viral on the Internet. A few days later the website's editor issued an apology. It seems Rodgers never saw her, the woman herself already had items signed by Rodgers in the past and was amazed and unhappy with the way the video was used, and several people who know Rodgers well said something was very wrong in this picture. "This is not who he is," they said.

I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired of the crazy array of destructive messages that some mean-spirited people are sending around on the Internet. There is no way of undoing the damage this editor did because he is unable to reach all the people who saw the video and message and believed it to be true. That's the way mistakes made in public communications are. I lost a good friend last year due to a bad Internet communication. She sent me a doomsday message written by a professor based on "his hunch." Concerned that my friend might take this depressing forecast as gospel truth, I wrote back a lengthy tome discrediting what this expert was saying. She called my remarks "Garbage!" How could I be so presumptious and arrogant as to argue with an expert? She never looked at the facts and simple logic I had used. I was wrong because, well, he was an Ivy League professor.

The computerized world will soon need to address this proliferation of misinformation because they have to. We now live in a world filled with falsehoods and undocumented "facts." People don't know what or who to believe anymore. This leaves us confused and anxious. Want to know something for sure? Then look to the honorable world of journalism, where sources are evaluated and double and triple checked, if necessary. As to anything else, well, don't believe everything you read. It may or may not be true.

Wanting truth preserved,
Margaret