Here’s a story y’all may or may not believe …
So a woman developed a little bit of an itch on the top of her head. Eventually, the itch got progressively worse and worse. Somewhere along the line, she starts itching her head during her sleep – and one fateful night she actually managed to scratch through her scalp, skull and into her brain.
Now I’ve told a few people about incredible story. Everybody’s had an itch – and the thought of boring straight through your own skull is incredible. It borders on the unbelievable – so much so that recounting of this story was always followed up by “Oh my god – is that real?”
“Sure,” I’d reply. “I read it in the New Yorker.” (Here’s a link to the article, ‘The Itch’)
For some reason, that reply was enough to assauge any apparent skepticism. It was simply enough to say I read the article, which uses several anonymous sources, in ‘The New Yorker.’
This is not an attempt to target this specific article – but it’s an odd world where anyone can be swayed toward belief of credibility simply based on a publication’s name.
Credibility is earned through years of reliability.
But always remember that even the Washington Post told the plight of an 8-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy, Dateline NBC showed us how easily a GM truck could explode if sideswiped and the New York Times told the story of four veterans, one of whom would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
But Janet Cooke never met ‘Jimmy’ – who was in fact a boy of her own creation. That GM truck blew up a lot easier when hidden explosives triggered the explosion. And Jayson Blair’s story of the injured soldiers turned out to be just one among dozens of pieces of fiction passed off as verifiable fact.
And, as with all crime or injustice, how much fiction slips past editors and producers and makes it to the general public … who, in their ignorance, accept this fiction clothed as fact …
