Pierre Salinger syndrome

The Pierre Salinger Syndrome refers to the tendency to assume that everything you read on the Internet is true.

Pierre Salinger is a former White House press secretary to President John F. Kennedy and 'ABC News' journalist. He relayed a bogus report from the Internet (Usenet) to the US News Media on November 8, 1996. The report said that TWA flight 800, which crashed on July 17, 1996, had been the victim of friendly fire (US Navy). As the media got the story, it came up immediately in the national headlines. So the whole world seems to be trolled from a half-baked Usenet rumor.

Quotations

Citation of the US News Media report:

• Veteran American newsman Pierre Salinger said today he has a government document saying that Navy gunners accidentally shot down TWA Flight 800 while conducting missile tests, killing all 230 people aboard. . . . Salinger said the document was dated Aug. 22 and was posted on the Internet at the beginning of September.--Jocelyn Noveck, "Pierre Salinger Claims Navy Missile Shot Down TWA Flight 800", The Associated Press, November 8, 1996

the whole source isn't very clear .. the document could be from the Internet or be only posted also on the Internet.

Earliest citation of Pierre Salinger Syndrome:

• Just because it's online doesn't make it true. We're heading toward something called the Pierre Salinger syndrome, which is endemic to people who have not hung around the new technology and are fooled by its shortfalls. --Moira Gunn, "Gunn Club", Wired, July 1997

External links

• first CNN report on November 9, 1996
• second CNN report on March 13, 1997
• "Gunn club" citation

• a controversional link to the story