 On The Line -- Issue 625 -- March 9, 2007  Online News and Views of Life in San Benito County with Herman Wrede Published by HollisterOnline.com -- Copyright 1995-2008 HollisterOnline.com
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On The Line -- Issue 625 -- March 9, 2007 Online News and Views of Life in San Benito County with Herman Wrede Published by HollisterOnline.com -- Copyright 1995-2008 HollisterOnline.com
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Warning: This column is somewhat crabby in tone so if you are not interested in reading something engendered from crankiness it would be better to skip it altogether and look for something more uplifting.
The Internet is a magnificent invention that enables people to find even obscure information easily and to communicate with other people all over the world. But because of its rapidity of transmission it also can pass on erroneous information in a twinkling. One that has showed up on the computer screen a number of times and that has also appeared in newspapers and magazines concerns a farmer in Scotland in the late 19th Century. He was out tending to his chores one summer day, the story goes, when he heard desperate cries emitting from a nearby bog. He ran over to investigate and saw a boy in his teens slowly sinking into the bog. The farmer managed to save the youth. The next day the boy returned with his father who offered the farmer money in gratitude. The farmer declined, and the man asked if he had children of his own. When he said he did, the man offered to pay the tuition so the farmer's son could go to college. As it turns out, the grateful man was the father of Winston Churchill, later Prime Minister of Great Britain. The youth whose tuition was paid was Alexander Fleming, who later discovered penicillin which many years later in World War II saved Churchill's life. It is a wonderfully inspiring story with a good deed that is rewarded by another many years later. However, it never happened. Winston Churchill, when queried about it, said he had never been in that section of Scotland. Fleming was enabled to go to college because of an inheritance from an uncle. Another story that has made the rounds numerous times concerns a Union officer the evening after a battle in the Civil War. The story continues that he heard moans coming from the field and knew that someone, Yankee or Confederate was suffering. As night fell he crawled out onto the field and found the fallen soldier. He dragged him back to safety, then saw by lantern-light that it was a Southern soldier who was breathing his last. Upon closer inspection, he recognized his own son who had gone to a Southern state a few years earlier to study music. The officer was grief stricken. In his son's pocket he found a sheet of paper with musical notes inscribed upon it. He summoned the company bugler who hummed the notes for him. They turned out to be "Taps," which the young man had composed shortly before the battle in which he fell. The following day the father had his son's body buried with the bugler playing for the first time the tune that has sounded over thousands of dead American military personnel ever since. It is a tragic but beautiful story, and it also never happened. "Taps" was composed during the Civil War by a Union officer and his bugler. The officer found a tune from a French military manual and asked the bugler to help adapt it with a few changes. After several trials they came up with the song we know so well today. A check of Army records disclosed that no officer of the name in the story ever served in the American Army. An inspection of the military manual disclosed the song that French forces had used upon burial of their dead. But even after the facts in those two anecdotes are presented, people who still prefer the inspirational story shake their heads and dig their heels in. They are not going to be dissuaded of the truth of their wondrous tales. Other misinformation has been widely and quickly circulated by people anxious to show that they are in the know about major events. Thus, Arnold Schwarzenegger was reported to have hanged himself shortly after becoming governor of California, and Bob Hope's death was reported several years before he died. It is a human trait to want to be in possession of big news and also very human to let others know about it. Newsmen can cite example after example of "news" based on mistakes in understanding. In my own career as a newsman that began in the summer of 1960 I have seen many such mistakes and have made a few of my own. My earlier editors pounded it into our heads again and again to double-check the components of a story before reporting it. At least several times I blushed deeply upon finding that what I thought was a scoop to be little more than gossip repeated in good faith. Fortunately, someone else had called to corroborate my information and found it to be wrong before the presses rolled. As an editor I insisted upon it with the news staff. Most of the errors over the years were honest mistakes but at least two were deliberately and maliciously given to reporters who had not yet gained the experience to weigh them. There are also news people -- so-called -- who infuse their own opinions into stories to amaze their wide audiences and to advance their own agendas. Some of that ilk have done very well indeed in making a lot of money and having their readers or listeners practically worshipping them. They are intelligent enough to know that the facts as presented will not interest their audiences so insert something of their own or - what is as bad -- leaving out something detrimental to their purpose. Most people do not have news training and often believe that if it is a newspaper or on a television newscast it must be so. The media make honest mistakes from time to time and management will correct them if pointed out. The Internet opens vast opportunities to users to disseminate what they may believe to be true to the world. Unfortunately, it has few criteria in gauging the amateur reporter's credibility. |
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