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Point 1: This is a blog, not the news page. Point 2: Somebody wrote it: it’s out there, so it must be true, right? Point 3: Wrong. Point 4: This is how conspiracy theories get started.

I’m waiting for the latest conspiracy theory to unfold. Since I don’t want to stay up all night waiting for the news to happen I thought I would just write the headline in advance.

Here is how a bit of extreme right journalism moves a rumour into the news department: Joseph Farah, who writes an expensive subscription newsletter that is picked up by WorldNetDaily writes that "intelligence sources" say al-Qaida "hackers could have tampered" with the plane in China. For good measure, and to create a little not-PC fear he adds that a lot of Pakistanis work at Chinese airports. I can’t say that I remember seeing more than one Pakistani, ever, in China, and I’ve been there several times. Maybe I go to the wrong airports.

So who is Joseph Farah, this expert and why does this matter if you’re sitting on the edge of Lake Geneva?

He is reportedly an extreme right writer in the US who likes
conspiracy theories. It’s hard to confirm this, with old 1999 online
e-mail exchanges as the main source of information. He was once
reportedly the editor of a Sacramento California daily.
Source, the slightly slanted ConWebWatch Primer, but there appears to
be plenty of confirmation of this. Take my word. WorldNetDaily is his
baby.

Ok, so the story gets picked up (scroll down on its page) by Crash-Aerien,
a web site that aggregates stories about air crashes, almost no matter
what the stories are or where they come from, which is what aggregating is all
about. News sites like it because of the dramatic tidbits served up.
The site is in French.

So its story gets picked up by romandie.com,
a French language Swiss news aggregator, which simply cites the source
(no link), leaving you with the impression that this is probably
legitimate. After all, romandie, which aggregates news from regular
Swiss media and some international sources, presumably only runs news,
not rumours.

Next stop: will the story be picked up by the Swiss media? And since
these media are mainstream, by English language media, and will the language
switch muddle the story and thereby give it credibility?

And then again, maybe it’s true.

Ah yes, the bodyguard: I was reading what the BBC says about the Boeing crash investigations and moved over to the story about the Diana’s bodyguard testifying.
It occurred to me that if anyone had asked him if he thought Al-Queda
hackers were linked to the crash he might have said "It’s possible."

Your decision: does that make it news?

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