Categories: OLD Media Moves

Attacking those who send fake news releases

Noam Cohen of The New York Times writes Monday about how Koch Industries is trying to find out who sent a fake news release and set up a fake corporate website using its name.

Cohen writes, “A first step for Koch was to go to court in Utah to compel an Internet service provider to provide information on who set up the Web site cited in the release, and thus determine who could be sued. (The group’s lawyer, Deepak Gupta of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, is so confident that its actions are protected by the Constitution that he contends that lifting anonymity must be the purpose of the lawsuit.)

“The episode goes to the heart of the one of paradoxes of the digital age. On the Internet, parody and mockery have never been easier to pull off. During the BP oil spill last year, the Twitter feed BPGlobalPR, with stinging, oafish comments purporting to represent the company’s public relations staff, had more than 10 times as many followers as the official one, BP_America.

“But the digital age also makes it possible to trace the parody to its origins in a way that wasn’t possible in an analog world. The English pamphleteer and rabble-rouser who wrote as Junius in the 18th century has never been definitively identified. But then, Junius didn’t have to register with an I.S.P.

“‘We assumed they would be upset about it,’ said one of the anonymous pranksters in a telephone interview arranged by Mr. Gupta. ‘But we had no guess that they would go to the level of a lawsuit. It’s ridiculous and overblown. What we did is completely acceptable, as parody.'”