From Yahoo Buzz:
An obscure blogger unearths some pages of President Obama’s college thesis. The report supposedly comes from big-time journalist Joe Klein of Time magazine. And the thesis has some real gems: like Obama’s disdain for the Constitution.
The whole thing was nothing more than a satirical post on a humor blog. But Rush Limbaugh, who quoted from the supposed thesis on his radio show, sure wasn’t laughing. Here’s how it went down.
An unknown blogger picked up on a made-up post meant as a joke, which claimed that Joe Klein had gotten his hands on 10 pages of student Obama’s college thesis. Rush Limbaugh jumped on it, which immediately sparked Web searches on “obama thesis.”
Supposedly titled “Aristocracy Revisited,” the excerpt revealed the president had “doubts” about the “so-called founders.” Juicy. Except not true. Limbaugh discovered halfway through his show that he’d been had, but defended himself by saying basically the thesis felt true.
Now, I’m sure that whipping Rush Limbaugh into a hysterical frenzy is probably easier than shooting fish in a barrel; and guys like him are always looking for the next morsel of “scandalous” flame-bait for their audience. This directive often overrides any sense of journalistic integrity they may have, so you can expect this sort of thing to happen every so often.
But while it might feel good to see ol’ Rush played for a fool it points to another disturbing trend. The 24/7 news-opinion media is a voracious machine and it’s really expensive to feed, so having all this “free” information online at less than arm’s length away is really tempting – sometimes too tempting. As the news media continues to rely more heavily on easy, cheap, and unregulated sources of information we should expect to see more such hoax’s being passed off (initially) as news – followed of course by the “real media’s” indignant whining every time the work of some “charlatan” exposes their news departments as being the lazy, opportunistic, and sometimes just under-funded beasts they are.
Oh, and notice how often in this crazy new world information that can’t be proven, or even flat-out wrong, is increasingly justified on the basis that it simply “rings true” with the reader – as Rush’s response to being “had” makes abundantly clear.