
 	
The Hawk Eye Columns 
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Bob Saar Columns 
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Sunday, September 30, 2001 


Too quick to click 

 Bob Saar We are told not to believe everything we read in the newspapers. Why do so many people believe what they read in their e-mail?

Now that the roughest edge of September 11 has softened some, questionable material is migrating across the Internet in the form of alarming rumors. It's time to stop blindly passing along e-mail. No matter how thrilling it may feel to forward a titillating message or photograph to others, stop before you click away.

Better yet, pick up a telephone and do a little research.

The tourist on the tower

The photograph is disheartening at first: A man stands on what appears to be the top of the World Trade Center's north tower as a passenger jet comes from below and behind him, about to strike the building. The photo surged across the Internet claiming the camera was found in the rubble.

The picture is a fake.

The north tower didn't have an outdoor observation deck. The jet is in focus but should be blurred due to speed and lens aperture. The sunlight angle on the jet is slightly different than that on the man. And so on.

One of the dozen copies of the photo sent to me contained this note by Patrick Hanson of Toronto: "Photo Sent to me by US Secret Service." I e-mailed Hanson, and he replied that, "I do a lot of work with the Federal Government, and the picture was sent to me by someone at the Secret Service. I have spoken to him and the picture apparently came through the USSS email system, but he does not know the originator."

I called the 36-year-old computer executive and asked him if he believed the photo was real simply because it came from a law enforcement officer.

"I wish I'd investigated it further before clicking the forward button," Hanson said.

His Secret Service friend may have sent the photo along with the same shocked absence of malice and forethought.

"He would not be the one who manufactured it," Hanson said. "I have no idea where he got it from."

A U.S. Secret Service agent then told me, "That photo is a fake. The story line we heard is that it came from the FBI."

Does any law agency know where this hoax originated?

"All I can tell you is that we had nothing to do with that photograph."

The face in the smoke

A photograph of the World Trade Center, captured moments after the second tower was hit, has what looks to be God's face -- or Satan's -- emerging from the billowing smoke. Taken by Mark D. Phillips, a former Associated Press staff photographer, it ran in newspapers around the nation.

Phillips said that his wife shouted at him to look at the TV the morning of September 11.

"I went into journalistic battle mode, grabbed two cameras and ran to the roof of the house," he said. Then he heard the second plane hit, and the "face" photo was his first shot.

Both Phillips and the AP state that he transmitted the photo to AP less than 15 minutes later.

That leaves no time for image doctoring.

Someone who spends a lifetime shooting news is not likely to perpetrate a hoax.

"I've got a history, and I'm not going to throw it away," Phillips said.

Phillips' picture is not faked. The face is real only if you want it to be real.

Neither photograph can be verified by traditional means. The jet photo camera, which supposedly survived the collapse of a 110-story building, can't be located by the FBI, who supposedly -- if you still want to believe that nonsense -- are the ones who found it. Phillips used a digital camera. In neither case is there a film negative to examine.

That leaves it up to the viewer to decide what's real.

"A lot of e-mail I'm getting places me with Internet hoaxes," Phillips said, referring to the nearly 5000 e-mails he's received. "People are sending me their entire religious stories and asking me for advice about how to conduct their lives."

Let the man be, people.

AP kept the original files and transmission times to repudiate skeptics.

"It's a photo of a horrid, horrid event," Phillips said. "That's all it is."

Hanson has also experienced negative reactions.

"The repercussions from this have been huge," he said. "People think it's a cruel joke."

Hanson stated well what I'm laboring to get across here.

"I apologize for forwarding this picture without further scrutiny," he said. "Once I saw it, I reacted by forwarding rather than inspecting first."

Maybe you don't believe this newspaper story. Maybe it would be more credible if I send it out in an e-mail.

Then you could forward it to 243 of your closest friends.


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