The Anatomy of a Vicious Rumor
The Education of Alexandra Polier is Polier’s own story of how she tries to track down the origin of the rumor about the affair between John Kerry and her.
Fortunately, she knows something about journalism, but what if she had not. Would some other news organization have tracked down this story and exposed the possible rumor mongers? Those gutless operatives like to live in dark places and don’t want to be exposed. They have to know that news organizations can expose them. I am intrigue how close Polier got to exposing the original sources.
Here is one graph that Polier wrote, which is important for all of us to think about:
I am struck by the pitiful state of political reporting, which is dominated by the unholy alliance of opposition research and its latest tool, the Internet. Even the Wall Street Journals Website ran Drudges story, with only a brief disclaimer that his stories werent always accurate.
June 3rd, 2004 at 5:12 am
It’s strange how people just love to believe the worst. I know an activist group that bases its entire project on half-truths, websites and articles they’ve seen in newspapers. A couple of years ago, they even pursuaded a major women’s organization to produce a “report” based on their opinons of things they’d seen around. This was a major embarrassment to the org, as you can imagine!