This is how fake Edison Chen Scandal news can manufactured

Source: MingPao by Ng Chi-sum

Gillian Chung made a one-minute speech to the press concerning the obscene photographs on the Internet and claimed that she had been "very naïve and very silly." Afterwards, the abuse heaped at Gillian Chung at the popular Hong Kong discussion forums went up by by several notches. Netizens listed five reasons why Gillian Chung is a hypocrite. One of the reasons was that she attended a Christian activity in September 2006 during which she called on students to forego pre-marital sex, even though it is now known that she has been posing for those obscene photographs before and during that time.

Towards that purpose, netizens even posted a "report" as the ironclad evidence.

[Ming Pao news] Artiste Gillian Chung was recently photographed surreptitiously by EasyFinder magazine while changing in her dressing froom. Yesterday, Gillian Chung and almost a thousand Christian gathered at the Tsim Sha Tsui Cultural Centre plaza to chant: "EasyFinder no way, secret filming of changing clothes no way ..." Gillian Chung and the almost 1,000 Christians were attending the organized by the City of David Cultural Centre. Apart from condemning the secret filming incident, they also called on students to refuse to engage in pre-marital sex.

This was obviously a good topic for a phone-in program. So we asked Pastor Ng Chun-chi of the City of David Cultural Centre about this and surprisingly he said: "No such thing." They had not invited Gillian Chung to attend the event, and she was not present on that day.

So I got very curious, because could it be that the Ming Pao report was fake news? We went to Wisenews as well as the Ming Pao electronic archives to retrieve that report. Then we saw that the netizens had rigged the quoted report by inserting "Gillian Chung and." For example, "almost one thousand Christians" became "Gillian Chung and almost one thousand Christians." This created the impression that Gillian Chung attended the event and called for the rejection of pre-marital sex.

Then I got on the search engine. I found out that the rigged Ming Pao 'report' has been circulated on the Internet like a virus for at least one week. It is cited in hundreds of Chinese-language forums in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan. All those who read this Ming Pao 'report' detested Gillian Chung even more for being such a hypocrite. So this was how a piece of fake news got manufactured. Even veteran commentators cited this 'report' to expound at length.

Certain netizens created this piece of false news in the hope that the public would detest Gillian Chung even more. The false news propagated across the Internet at an astonishing speed. But it is only possible to sustain the falsity for some time. When one uses lies to accuse other people of lying, one's own lies will be exposed eventually. When that time comes, public trust of the discussion forums will go bankrupt.

No matter how netizens feel about the artistes or their characters, the discussions on the Internet can be free expressions but they should never distort or lie about the truth.

In the virtual world, you don't know what is true or false. The party on the other side of the chat session may be a dog and you wouldn't know it. Can you still trust "news" on the Internet