Beware the worldwide web of deceit

A hoax involving a non-existent Moldovan teenage soccer star has reminded the world's journalists of the perils of online research, writes Fiona McCann

SOCCER FANS scanning through the recent London Timeslist of rising European football stars may have been surprised to find at No 30 a 16-year-old Moldovan called Masal Bugduv. Though his name clearly failed to ring alarm bells across the water, it would have rung a bell with anyone who ploughed through Scothscéaltaand other sundry tales as Gaeilge for Leaving Certs past, sounding as it did suspiciously like the title of a Pádraic Ó Conaire story, M'Asal Beag Dubh.

A little research on Bugduv would have thrown up the odd web reference to reports about his prowess from a purportedly Moldovan newspaper called – wait for it – Diario Mo Thon, the translation for which doesn't necessitate Leaving Cert Irish.

Turns out Bugduv was the brainchild of anonymous, and presumably Irish, hoaxers who hoodwinked not only the London Times,but also various news websites, including Goal.com and The Offside, by writing fake Associated Press reports and adding a Wikipedia entry, which has since been deleted.

Bugduv’s demise was swiftly accomplished, and few traces remain in the mainstream media of the status he once held, though his legend lives on. Still, there’s a lesson for us all in the rise and fall of this non-existent Moldovan teen.

“Don’t believe everything you see in print” has long been the cautionary mantra, but time-pressed members of the fourth estate reliant on the internet as a research tool would do well to remember that the same applies to what they read on their computer screens.

With the proliferation of information on the internet comes the proliferation of misinformation, and legitimate news sources can sometimes be sucked in.

Take for example John McCain policy adviser Martin Eisenstadt, the man responsible for leaking the fact that vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin did not know Africa was a continent. David Shuster, a news reader on US cable channel MSNBC was quick to quote Eisenstadt as the campaign got vicious, despite the fact he doesn't actually exist. The purported fellow of the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy was in fact the creation of two obscure film-makers pitching for a TV show. Allegedly. The unfortunate Shuster was not the only one to be taken in by the non-existent Eisenstadt – the New Republicand the Los Angeles Timesalso had the wool pulled over their eyes.

As fun as it is to see the odd “churnalist” exposed, the alacrity with which fiction can become established and widely disseminated fact through the medium of the worldwide web can be terrifying. When three San Francisco residents decided to make a fake video of a beheading and see how quickly it spread through the web, the results were astounding.

Within months, the grainy footage, which was made in a house in the Bay Area using fake blood but purported to be of a US citizen in Iraq, was being broadcast by two Middle Eastern television stations, and had been picked up by the Associated Press and Reuters. According to reports, that is.

"What is amazing," one of the hoaxers, Laurie Kirchner, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "is the power of the internet." Equally amazing to some is the continued gullibility of the reader, though perhaps less so the laziness of the journalist.

All research for this article was done online