Hoax: Little red book and the DHS

[Pengwuino]

hoax: "Little red book" and the DHS

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/24/students_tall_tale_revealed/

It rocketed across the Internet a week ago, a startling newspaper report that agents from the US Department of Homeland Security had visited a student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth at his New Bedford home simply because he had tried to borrow Mao Tse-Tung's ''Little Red Book" for a history seminar on totalitarian goverments.

The story, first reported in last Saturday's New Bedford Standard-Times, was picked up by other news organizations, prompted diatribes on left-wing and right-wing blogs, and even turned up in an op-ed piece written by Senator Edward M. Kennedy in the Globe.

But yesterday, the student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter.

I'm glad people take the time to check out these stories, especially from young adults/kids.

 

[loseyourname]

I was watching the movie Shattered Glass the other day, about the reporter Stephen Glass who fabricated pretty much every story he ever wrote at the New Republic, and it was pretty illuminating as to how easy it seemingly is to simply make up news. At least in this case the reporter was tricked and not lying, but even so.

 

[Bystander]

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=104456

 

[Pengwuino]

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=104456

I suppose I should have tossed that into that thread.