- "The Duck Test" by anonymous
Have you ever received a message from a friend that he got from a friend of a friend of a friend that tells you about something that gets you all riled up or that you feel you need to do something about? The truth is that these messages are mostly in the category of "tall tales."
And a very new tall tale that's doing the rounds concerns this story: "Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students' lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students."
My path to reading this somewhat outrageous assertion started when a close friend forwarded a link to titled "Big Brother? Feds Order Schools to Monitor Kids Facebook Posts & Lunchtime Chatter" in an online publication called "The Blaze".
My friend added the comment "I just can't believe this." My friend was quite right to be suspicious.
It appears that the story was derived (and extremely liberally quoted) from on another news-oriented Web site, The Daily Caller, titled "Fed instructs teachers to Facebook creep students," dated March 16 this year.
This story has, after just over 24 hours circulation, over 65,000 references to it according to a Google search I did for the headline.
What is curious, and rather obvious, if you read the from the Department of Education, is that you won't find any grounds for the claims regarding government pressure to monitor students' Internet use either at school or at home.
So let's get this straight: The DoE letter uses the word "Internet" just once, and the single use of "online" is to direct readers to resources on the Web, while "monitor" is never used in the context of online anything and "Facebook" is also completely absent from any discussion.
In fact, the whole letter is quite obviously intended to frame and discuss the legal and procedural issues surrounding the problem of bullying and what schools are required to do to address the problem without any specific focus on Internet anything.
Nowhere does the letter suggest "creeping" or monitoring of students; it simply points out that schools are legally obligated to deal with the problem of bullying and that "A school is responsible for addressing harassment incidents about which it knows or reasonably should have known."
Nowhere does the letter say, as The Daily Caller article by Neil Munro, contends, "Under the new interpretation, principals and their schools are legally liable if they fail to curb 'harassment' of students, even if it takes place outside the school, on Facebook or in private conversation among a few youths."
The only "new interpretation" I can find is that provided by Munro and The Daily Caller.
Look, it's really simple: In our society, anyone can be taken to court for pretty much anything and a school, its staff, and teachers can be charged with anything any parent or anyone else pleases. The DoE letter simply outlines what is required to avoid the most obvious accusations of negligence on the part of a school when it comes to the problem of bullying.
But what's happened? The Daily Caller article conflated the DoE letter with a whole barrage of unsubstantiated claims, such as: "There has only been muted opposition to this far-reaching policy among the professionals and advocates in the education sector, most of whom are heavily reliant on funding and support from top-level education officials. The normally government-averse tech-sector is also playing along, and on March 11, Facebook declared that it was 'thrilled' to work with White House officials to foster government oversight of teens' online activities."
Really? What muted opposition? How is the "policy" (which isn't actually a policy) "far-reaching" when there's nothing extraordinary in the letter's content! I could go on slicing and dicing, but there's no reason to; it's all baseless hyperbole.
This is spin at its finest and the fact that there are already 65,000 plus references to The Daily Caller article attests to the incredible gullibility, credulousness, and lack of intellectual rigor that apparently characterizes a lot of online blogs and journalists today - not one of the sites I looked at were at all critical, they apparently took the assertions as gospel.
To all of the online publications duped by this article: Use your commonsense. It's simple; this is the online world. You and the articles you reference aren't limited to X column inches. You can include links and footnotes. You can provide support for your claims and theories. You can cite dates and sources. Bits cost next to nothing and if you want to be a real journalist, follow the story. Recycle it just for page views to drive advertisements and you're a joke.
The whole mess is shameful on the part of The Daily Caller, The Blaze, and every other online publication that accepted what was unfounded, unprofessional opinion, and recycled it as fact.
But there's another aspect to this: The circulation of tall tales will always be part of our culture and therefore part of the online world. That said, we, as online readers, need to be far more critical and more demanding. We need to look for veracity. We need to demand support for assertions of any kind, but especially those that appear to fail the smell test. And we need to make the smell test more rigorous.
When you find yourself thinking "this can't be real?!" listen to what your commonsense is telling you: If it quacks, it's probably not an eagle.
Gibbs can hear the sound of ducks in Ventura, Calif. Your commonsense to backspin@gibbs.com.
in Network World's Wide Area Network section.