The lost-sense of journalism
The lost-world was "hacked"
yesterday.
Someone replaced the opening image
on the lost-world website yesterday.
The new image transformed the scary
dinosaur skeleton into a rubber
duck. The caption: The duck-world.
Beneath the caption was a very small
tagline stating, hackers. Every
detail of this replacement was
perfect. The graphics were
professionally designed. The
imagemap was well designed and the
rest of the site was untouched and
worked perfectly.
The fact is, this was a publicity
stunt and it's pathetic.
The makers of lost-world.com thought
it would be a great trick to put up
a spoof on their own site and blame
the big bad hackers. So they made a
cutesy parody called the duck-world,
and then proceeded to make the
actual site. Real examples of
hacking on the net include the CIA
site turned into the Central
Stupidity Agency, and the Justice
Department site changed to display
pornographic images. These are prime
examples of hacking. A duck,
perfectly designed, is not a hack;
it's a publicity stunt.
This is proven by the image and file
details. Go to any image on the Web
and right-click on it and save it to
your hard drive. Then go to your
file manager and look at the details
of the image. There should be a last
modified date on it. The date on the
duck image was actually two days
before the date on the actual
dinosaur image that was supposed to
be on the site. Pretty smart of the
hackers to know what the site looked
like before it was even created, eh?
The creators of the site then
contacted CNN after the site was
launched and said that their site
was hacked. Oh NO! They gave CNN all
the details. See Story. And CNN like
a good reporter (or a paid one)
posted the story at: 2:57 a.m. May
28, 1997.
This is very interesting considering
that the file dates on the hacked
sites were dated AFTER the story was
posted. CNN wrote the story and had
the hacked imagery BEFORE the site
was changed.
Plain and simple, the creators of
the lost-world.com tried to trick
people into visiting the site to see
the hack. And there was never a
hack. It was a complete fabrication.
A Lie. Garbage. Whether CNN knew it
was a lie is unknown. But at the
very least, they did not check the
basic facts of the story at all.
This is my biggest problem. The lack
of common sense in the net media.
Every story is eaten up with the
barest fact checking. If CNN would
have thought about this at all they
would have realized that it was a PR
stunt.
I just saw that news.com also picked
up the story. Media Whores, selling
themselves to a blue-chip site just
for the publicty.
Does this bother you? Email C/Net
and CNN and let them know they don't
check their facts very closely. CC:
Me too.
Reporting on the net isn't about
publicity and fluff. It's about the
truth. Or at least it should be.
-
There is no off position on the genius switch. ...David Letterman
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>