An email message has been circulating on the network for about five years – or more – saying that the Public Domain website will be deactivated due to lack of access.
Which, obviously, is a lie.
There is no lack of people who, without checking the information, give credit and notoriety to it passing it on, spreading their and my email contact to spammers and other bad faith characters on the internet.
But when an online newspaper does that, putting this rumor – this old rumor already – on its home page, it is in fact in a communication crisis.
You don’t check anything else before publishing.
The above call is from the newspaper O Globo Online. It leads to a section written by readers.
- Read the hoax published in O Globo
The question is not who wrote it.
The point is that the cover editor, supposedly knowledgeable in journalistic procedures, thought the story was cute and used it. I mean, the thing went on the cover. A rumor that has been known for years as a rumor made the cover.
And, as you learn in Balzac’s Lost Illusions: if it’s in the newspaper now, it must be true.
The tip was from the reader Alexandre Kovacs .