unSpun

by Brooks Jackson

  Yet this nonsense still circulates. Our inbox at FactCheck.org contains messages from dozens of people who have received the hoax, asking us whether there is anything to it. A woman who said she lives just blocks from the site of the World Trade Center called us in January 2006 after her brother sent her a version of the message complete with color photos of the Twin Towers burning. She said that despite her expressions of skepticism, her brother insisted it was true. There were plenty of reasons for the sister to question the message. Why isn’t North himself hammering away at it constantly on Fox News, where he is host of a weekly program? Would Al Gore really have asked softball questions such as “Why are you so afraid of this man?” at a nationally televised hearing?

  The brother swallowed this bunkum, we suspect, because he wanted to believe it. The Ollie-Osama-Al fairy tale made liberal Democrats look like fools and the hard-nosed conservative North look like a prophet. It also shifted blame for the failure to foresee the 9/11 attacks away from incumbent President George W. Bush. While we can’t read the brother’s mind, he probably fell into the “root for my side” trap we described in Chapter 4. What’s certain is that he failed to adopt the active open-mindedness that could have saved him from being fooled. We know this because he not only failed to note the warning signs that made his sister doubt this tale, he also failed to make even a feeble effort to look for contrary evidence. And he could have found that evidence with no more effort than it took him to forward the fable to his sister.

  What Ollie Really Said

  As we write this, an Internet search for the keywords “Oliver North” plus “bin Laden” brings up literally dozens of articles disputing the hoax. That would have told our correspondent’s brother that, at the very least, there were serious doubts about the accuracy of the story, and that a little more research was called for. The very first hit on our search was an article headlined “Oliver Twisted,” which flatly declares that the story of the hearing is false.

  Why should we believe this article and not an e-mail message, which may have come from a trusted friend or relative? Actually, we shouldn’t believe either of them, not automatically. So far we’ve discovered only that the e-mail may be a hoax and that we need to dig more deeply.

  First, we evaluate the “Oliver Twisted” article. It gives the sources of its information in footnotes, thus enabling us to check what’s being said. Also, the article appears on Snopes.com, a website that has been around for years and is run by two California folklore experts, Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, who are devoted to examining the many urban legends that have migrated to the Web. That’s another point in favor of Snopes.com, a site that isn’t pushing any particular political agenda or point of view. As we look farther down our search list, we also find that half a dozen similar websites, all of them devoted to debunking false Internet rumors, are also calling the Ollie-Osama-Al story false. So far, the neutral bunk-busters are unanimous: this is a scam.

  And the final proof is also right there on the Internet. Midway down the first page of our search results, we find a link to the U.S. Senate, which has devoted a brief article to exposing this very hoax. Better yet, the Senate staff has posted a copy of the actual transcript of the 1987 hearings into the Iran-Contra affair at which North gave his testimony. Gore wasn’t there. Committee lawyer Nields did the questioning. North named Abu Nidal, not bin Laden. Case closed. (If you want to see the transcript yourself, go to www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/ollie.pdf.)

  Incidentally, North himself has tried to set the record straight a number of times. On his own website (www.olivernorth.com), he writes that he has received “several thousand e-mails from every state in the U.S. and 13 foreign countries” asking about the bin Laden hoax message, which he called “simply inaccurate.”

  Finding the Good Stuff

  We could cite countless examples here of false information floating around the Internet; you probably have seen plenty as well. The Internet is pure anarchy: more information is available more readily than ever before, but there are no regulations, no standards, and no penalties for making careless mistakes or even for telling the most outrageous conceivable whoppers. Fortunately, finding the good stuff can be fairly easy, and even fun. We’ve already demonstrated how quickly the Oliver North hoax could be shot down. The key is finding the right websites and knowing how to evaluate their reliability. In the remainder of this chapter, we’ll share with you a few of the things we’ve learned at FactCheck.org about finding trustworthy information on the Web.

  First and most important, consider the source. Who stands behind the information? The Ollie North hoax was anonymous, impossible to trace back to the person who originated it. The author claimed to have seen a videotape of North “at a lecture the other day,” which of course is also impossible to verify. Claims from such sources deserve no credence whatever because you have no idea who is making the claim, or why. Assume that anonymous or untraceable claims are false until proven otherwise.

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  The Hoax

  This version was forwarded to FactCheck.org in 2006, but it’s been around since 2001 and is only one of many we’ve been asked about.

  Anyone remember this?

  It was 1987! At a lecture the other day they were playing an old news video of Lt. Col. Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings during the Reagan Administration.

  There was Ollie in front of God and country getting the third degree, but what he said was stunning!

  He was being drilled by a senator; “Did you not recently spend close to $60,000 for a home security system?”

  Ollie replied, “Yes, I did, Sir.”

  The senator continued, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, “Isn't that just a little excessive?”

  “No, sir,” continued Ollie.

  “No? And why not?” the senator asked.

  “Because the lives of my family and I were threatened, sir.”

  “Threatened? By whom?” the senator questioned.

  “By a terrorist, sir” Ollie answered.

  “Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?”

  “His name is Osama bin Laden, sir” Ollie replied.

  At this point the senator tried to repeat the name, but couldn't pronounce it, which most people back then probably couldn't. A couple of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator continued. Why are you so afraid of this man?” the senator asked.

  “Because, sir, he is the most evil person alive that I know of”, Ollie answered.

  “And what do you recommend we do about him?” asked the senator.

  “Well, sir, if it was up to me, I would recommend that an assassin team be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth.”

  The senator disagreed with this approach, and that was all that was shown of the clip.

  By the way, that senator was Al Gore!

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  The Disproof

  These are images of the transcript of North’s actual testimony, taken from the official website of the U.S. Senate, at www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/ollie.pdf:

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  Look instead for sources with authority. The U.S. Senate’s historian is, obviously, an excellent source with respect to the Ollie North affair. When the Senate website posts pages from the official transcript of those hearings, you can be close to 100 percent certain that what you’re reading is what North really said. North’s own website is another good source, because the information is coming from North himself, and also because he is about the last person we’d expect to lie to protect a Democrat.

  Government websites have as much authority and credibility as the agencies that stand behind them. To get the latest official estimate of the U.S. population, you can now go directly to the website of the Census Bureau, where you will also find official measures of poverty, income, the number of persons with and without health insurance, and much more. The figures we cited for causes of
death among women came directly from the website of the National Center for Health Statistics, where the federal government posts its official tally of death records from all fifty states. And our figures showing the tiny percentage of affluent Americans who actually pay estate tax came from the website of the Internal Revenue Service, which publishes data taken directly from the tens of millions of tax forms it processes each year. At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s website, you can find authoritative information on what scientists know about the solar system and the universe, including the latest on the expected recovery of the earth’s protective ozone layer.

  Look for a “dot-gov” extension on the website’s address. For example, www.socialsecurity.gov is the home page of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where you can find the latest statistics on the system’s financial troubles, provided by its board of trustees. There you will see that, unless Washington acts, benefits will have to be cut, or taxes increased, in 2040. You can also run down the most popular names for babies. In applications for Social Security cards, parents in 2005 chose Emily for girls and Jacob for boys more often than any other names. The dot-gov extension also can be used by state governments. For example, at www.ohio.gov you can see who’s governor or read the state constitution or laws, and at the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s site you can even get a satellite map of all the fatal car, truck, and motorcycle crashes in the state in 2005. That last may or may not be particularly useful, but since it comes from the Ohio State Highway Patrol, you can be reasonably sure it’s correct.

  We would never suggest that everything you find on a dot-gov website should be believed, of course. Apply thought and common sense, as you would anywhere else.

  At www.whitehouse.gov, for example, you will find the words that President Bush has spoken at his public appearances, officially transcribed and in full context. You can be reasonably confident that those are Bush’s exact words; the incidents where reporters’ tapes differ from the official transcript are rare. But it’s still up to you to decide whether you believe what Bush said. And also be careful when using House and Senate websites. For example, www.dems.gov takes you to the website of the House Democratic Caucus, made up of all the Democrats in the House, just as www.gop.gov takes you to the House Republican Conference. These partisan websites will tell you much about the current party line, but can’t be expected to give a balanced account of the facts.

  Most official House and Senate committee websites have been even worse, seeming to speak for the full committee but in fact posting only talking points for the party in the majority and omitting mention of the minority party’s views. In 2006, www.waysandmeans.gov was run by Republicans, who controlled the House and the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee along with it. So it should be no surprise that the committee website contained a misleading press release praising a Republican bill that “would permanently eliminate the estate tax for 99.7 percent of all Americans.” That’s misleading because you can’t really “eliminate” a tax for the 99 percent who weren’t liable for it in the first place.*3 That release was typical of the slanted information on taxes and Republican-sponsored tax cuts that appeared on the committee’s website.

  With Republicans in control, reaching the site run by the Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee required a visitor to find the link labeled “Minority Website,” which appeared in tiny 8-point type hidden away near the bottom of the page. And the same went for nearly all other House and Senate committee websites: they spoke only for the majority party. When Democrats are in control these official sites may or may not become less partisan, so visitors should continue to be wary of them.

  Not all committee sites were so one-sided. Two laudable exceptions were the Joint Committee on Taxation, which maintained a bipartisan staff of experts to estimate the effects of proposed tax bills on the federal budget, and the Congressional Budget Office, which did the same for a wide array of bills and government programs. That’s something we hope will continue, but visitors should be alert for any changes as partisan control of Congress shifts.

  Websites sponsored by academic institutions can contain a wealth of solid information. Here look for the “dot-edu” extension on the domain name, as in nahic.ucsf.edu. This is the website of the National Adolescent Health Information Center (NAHIC), which is associated with the department of pediatrics at the University of California–San Francisco. The “edu” in the domain name is short for “education,” and only universities, colleges, and other accredited institutions of higher learning are allowed to use it. Research librarians searching the Internet for information on a new topic will often limit their searches to dot-edu and dot-gov websites, knowing they are much more likely to find authoritative information there than on a dot-com or dot-org website, which anybody can own.

  However, the dot-edu extension is no guarantee of accuracy. Consider the example of Michael Bellesiles’s book on guns, discussed previously. Professors often post their current research papers on their own pages within the website of the college or university where they teach; while such papers can be excellent resources, they are also the work of only that one professor, and don’t carry the weight of the institution. Some colleges even give students personal web pages along with their dorm rooms and gym cards, and those pages all have dot-edu extensions too. If you find something on a university website that seems to contain the information you need, dig a little until you are satisfied that it was put there by experts you can trust, not by a freshman who’s about to flunk out.

  News organizations also run websites—for example, www.cnn.com and www.nytimes.com. In general, you can trust these sites to the same degree you would trust the news organizations that stand behind them. The BBC News website is superb for international news often ignored by U.S. news organizations. There’s no need to dismiss a news story just because it appears on the website of a local or regional newspaper: the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune was among the very best sources of information for what was actually happening during the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, for example. For three days, the newspaper published only on the Web, because its printing plant was underwater, and eventually the quality of its reporting earned its staff two Pulitzer Prizes, including a gold medal for meritorious public service and the prize for reporting of breaking news. In this case, the information on a local newspaper’s website was far superior to that found on the government websites of, for example, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers.

  Local newspapers also carry dispatches from The Associated Press, which still sets the standard for balanced, just-the-facts reporting of current events, at least in our view. (We may be a bit biased about The AP, because Brooks Jackson worked there until 1980.) A story with an AP byline carries The AP’s authority, in addition to that of the newspaper that published it. For recent events, try using Google, Yahoo, or any other good Internet search engine that can limit the search to “news.” This should bring up any recent stories that contain the key words you have entered; frequently, the results will include several copies of the same AP story as reprinted in different places. However, these searches will also dredge up posts on all sorts of strongly partisan or ideological websites and blogs that can’t necessarily be trusted to give a full or even an accurate account.

  Free news sites have their limitations. Some require an annoying “registration” process that requires you to hand over personal information, such as your age, sex, and (in some cases) even your income. That information can be sold or otherwise used to target you for commercial purposes. You may want to check the stated “privacy policy” first, or look for the same story on another site.

  A more serious weakness of Internet news searches is that most news sites charge a fee for access to stories more than about a week old. That’s understandable, given the huge expense of gathering and editing those stories, but often it’s impractical for the everyday user to find an older news story quickly. TV networks are especially difficult to
search. They got in the habit of charging money for written transcripts of their news broadcasts long ago, and most still don’t post such transcripts on their websites, except for special interviews. Notable exceptions are CNN, the BBC, and NBC News’s Meet the Press program.

  To do a thorough search of news from last month or last year, you need access to the excellent services of either Nexis or Factiva, both of which carry the full text of nearly every major newspaper, magazine, and wire service story for the past two decades. The services can be quite expensive: Nexis charges nonsubscribers $3 for every news story paid for by credit card, for example. Check your local library, which may have Nexis or Factiva access for free or at a reduced price. The online services of many college and university libraries also have subscriptions that can be used for free by faculty, students, or other authorized users.

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  Some FactCheck Favorites

  Amid all the deception and misinformation on the Internet, some sites stand out as mostly reliable and unbiased. Here are just a few of the many we at FactCheck.org have found useful. All are free, unless otherwise noted.

  www.cdc.gov

  The National Center for Health Statistics, of the Centers for Disease Control, has official data on births, deaths, accidental injuries, marriages, and divorces. The “FastStats” feature allows easy location by topic.

  www.ConsumerReports.org

  The online version of Consumer Reportsmagazine, publishing unbiased test reports since 1936 on products of all sorts, from autos to kitchen appliances. Published by the nonprofit Consumers Union, which accepts no advertising or even free test samples. A $26 annual subscription can prevent mistakes costing much more.