Viral Emails Never Die: FactCheck Draws Up the 2010 List
FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, releases what they've dubbed the Viral Spiral:
Summary
There’s a reason they call chain e-mails "viral" — their transmission is swift, extensive and very hard to stop. They tend to contain indignant, outraged messages that are nearly always false and often malicious. We can’t say exactly which virus these nasty messages resemble, but it isn’t one whose effects go away on their own while you drink plenty of fluids.
In 2010 we continued to see new outbreaks of viruses that we first refuted years ago. And in addition, there were a large number of new infections. Despite what you may have been told:
- It’s not true that the White House is planning to tax all credit card transactions.
- Muslims are not being exempted from the new health care law.
- President Obama did not order up a private jet for the family’s pet dog, Bo.
- Speaker Pelosi’s spending for liquor on congressional trips isn’t notably different than that of her predecessor. And Pelosi herself doesn’t even drink alcohol.
- The new health care law does not contain a 3.8 percent "sales tax" on the sale of all personal residences.
- Obama did not cancel the National Day of Prayer nor did he participate in a Muslim prayer event at the Capitol.
Here are this year’s most virulent and pestilential inbox-busters.
Analysis
Ever since we first launched in late 2003, we’ve been fielding questions from our readers about anonymous e-mails that travel from inbox to inbox like some kind of plague. We get so many that we launched our Ask FactCheck feature three years ago. In 2008 we advised readers: "Assume all such messages are wrong, and you’ll be right most of the time." That advice still holds in 2010.
Some of this disinformation has proven to be impossible to eradicate. The very first viral e-mail we handled in an Ask FactCheck claimed that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was trying to institute a windfall tax on retirement income. Everything in the message, from the claim to the quotes, was a full-on fabrication, and we said so in December 2007. And yet, we were still being asked about this bogus claim as recently as September 22, 2010.
Sometimes these viral claims come from liberals maligning conservatives, as when President Bush was falsely accused in 2004 of wanting to bring back military conscription, or when Sarah Palin was falsely accused in 2008 of banning a long list of books from the Wasilla library, a list that included some books that had not even been published at the time. But most of the false claims we are asked about are authored by people attacking Democrats and liberals. We don’t know why.
Still Sliming
A look at our inbox shows that the urge to slime President Barack Obama hasn’t really diminished since the 2008 campaign. Then, we dealt with false claims that he wouldn’t put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance; now, we have seen doctored photos purporting to show him using the wrong hand. Then, we had claims that he was a Muslim; now, we hear false reports that he canceled the National Day of Prayer but allowed a Muslim celebration to go forward, andcomplaints that he undermined national security by appointing "devout" Muslims to Homeland Security posts — as though religious devotion were evidence of terrorist sympathies. Then, peopledoubted the birth certificate image his campaign provided; now, they circulate bogus claims about court actions demanding his birth records. Then, he ate arugula; now, e-mails claim (falsely) that he flies his dog around on a private jet. (That one started with a misinterpreted newspaper report that was quickly clarified by the paper, but the tale of the flying dog wags on in cyberspace.)
Obama has been joined in the stocks by Nancy Pelosi. This year, Pelosi’s drink tab was a major topic of discussion — e-mails claimed that she spent more than $100,000 of public money on food and alcohol on congressional delegations. We found that to be an exaggeration, and records showed that her travel expenses, though high, were equivalent to former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s. (Also, Pelosi doesn’t drink alcohol.) We debunked a similar claim about Pelosi’s plane travel from the same group, Judicial Watch, two years ago. But that didn’t stop people from passing this one on.
Continue with the rest of the viral spiral at the FactCheck.org site:
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