Most journalists who write for newspapers get letters that attack an article they wrote. Most of them don’t think much about it. Some of these cite religious sources to back up their claims.
Moralizing becomes part of the letter along with other information, often false, that is sometimes carefully hidden. The letters become particularly hostile if a reporter writes an article questioning dearly-held concepts that might not be accurate or that have two sides. You have to have a thick skin if you want to write the truth, especially if that truth is difficult for some people to hear.
Within the past few days I just received a disturbing forwarded email after writing an article about homosexuals and the clergy for a local paper in Louisiana that had a front page article anticipating the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. This time I worried about the letter I got, considering how many people had received the forwarded email before me and the ones I realized would continue to receive it.
Lots of forwarded emails folks receive are harmless, so people just continue to forward them, barely reading the contents. Some of the email received, however, can interfere with how readers accept and believe accurate, reliable and documented material by comparison. This is a problem that occurs during elections, but it also goes on during debates over controversial issues. There were certainly a lot of controversial emails that were sent along about Barack Obama during the election of 2008 that
some have discussed online. I have learned that I am not alone in being concerned about the practice of forwarding false information and the harm it can cause;
others are worried as well.
Fraudulent emails and false information can be passed along and sometimes put on blogs as if it is fact. Many of these epistles stir up feelings that can be harmful to the culture. The forwarded email I just received is one of these. It came addressed to me after I had written an article about the homosexual clergy and conflicts within the Episcopalian Church. The email began by assailing me for having discussed the possibility that there are two sides to the issue and then proceeded to tell me of the bad company I was in, that included ABC news.
The email, at first glance, says it comes from a “Beverly Martindale” whose signature line describes her as a representative of Mary Kay Cosmetics. It is unlikely that this training has properly prepared her for news reporting, however she has decided to do so anyway, initiating an email about correspondence she received from a Jim Nugent, a man she writes is a coach in Childress, Texas, then forwarding it to me as part of a diatribe. She writes that a Mr. Nugent innocently wrote to ABC Online complaining about a program that featured gay marriage. She quotes from Mr. Nugent and discussed how the gentleman had been reprimanded by ABC for questioning the program. The exchange, allegedly from the ABC webmaster to Jim Nugent, is full of Bible references from Mr. Nugent and hostile attacks on those messages, and the Bible as a reference, from the webmaster.
But the email forward didn’t stop with that. It continued on with the comment that I not only was advocating homosexuality, to the detriment of the lives of innocent children, but I also supported the anti-Christ, Barack Obama. That was the proverbial red flag that awakened the bull in this reporter.
Having worked at one time as a questioned document examination with some training in content analysis, I examined the contents of the email because I was concerned about the veracity of its contents. An initial review of the email revealed no direct mail from ABC that had been forwarded from either Mr. Nugent or ABC. Instead it seemed to be a virtual cut-and-paste or typed message from a single source with much of the contents of either party's alleged messages using similar language, punctuation and style. These are clues that indicate that the original author, and responder, are one and the same person. In short the author implies that ABC is biased, irreligious, irreverent and callous with no other evidence other than the email content, which to me appeared false.
I forwarded the email, to a former colleague, a prominent handwriting and content analysis expert whose primary work is to evaluate the origin and authenticity, or lack of it, of written material. He agreed that there had been no hostile response from ABC and that the message was a forgery.
I went on to look up the anti-Christ accusation to determine who had been making this claim and the veracity of it. For those who still believe that
rumor and opinion and others, here’s the
source to check that out. The claim isn’t true.
Christian resources backs up Snopes finding..
I wonder how many people receive emails like these and believe the content in them and how many check the facts. Those missives that attack individuals or institutions might raise questions and provoke us to check sources and information before sending it on. As a journalist I use my head for some of that and for certain specific items I research from a variety of resources.
The moral of the story might be summarized as this: don’t believe everything you read in your email box nor consider it the news of the day. Most journalists know that already, but the public often doesn’t since false emails continue to misinform and harass. Misinformation can interrupt the flow of information and is likely something that should be shown as false and not passed along until properly reviewed.
