June 28, 1998

Dear 60 Minutes:

With your story, "Internet, The Rumor Mill," you completely miss led your audience.

Lesley told Andrew Cantor, Senior Editor of the Internet World magazine, that she wanted to tell a story on the Internet and then asked him if she could do it . Mr. Cantor replied, "A piece of cake." (What Mr. Cantor was going to do was to create a web site for Lesley on the Internet.) (60 Minutes continues throughout the story implying how easy it is for the average Joe to be heard, on the Internet, for example, Leslie states, "Live on the Internet...from the biggest company to a guy in his basement, anyone can have a site on the Internet and James Alexander of eWatch states, "People are out on the Internet, instead of telling 20 people, they're telling 20 million people and that's the issue." That's my issue too and one of the points I'm challenging. It's like 60 Minutes suggests to its audience that you post a web site and then the norm is to have 20 million people see it, or would it have been much more accurate to say that one in a few million web sites are viewed that much, I believe it's the latter.)

Yes, a piece of cake for the Senior Editor of Internet World magazine, but what about the average Joe on the street? No. You have to own a computer, you have to be connected to the Internet, you have to own certain software packages, you have to have some basic computer skills, and if you truly want to create your own web page, you have to know how to program in HTML (Most people in the world don't even have a telephone, let alone an Internet connection.)

This is nothing unique to the Internet, that is, even before the Internet, the average Joe could be heard if he was willing to put in the time, effort, and money (just like they must do on the Internet). There were underground newspapers, amateur radio, almost anyone could publish a book or pamphlet on anything, and virtually every school and college had its own newspaper.

The key is in the numbers which has not changed with the Internet. You could publish a book before the Internet, but how many people would read the book? A publisher on the Internet it faced with the same problem, how many people will see or read the story?

And who determines what is read on the Internet? The search engines? And who owns the search engines? Who do you think 60 Minutes? (60 minutes briefly shows the audience search engines, what they don't show or tell you is that search engines don't have to accept your URL and many of the search engines critically screen URLs. They also don't point out that even if the search engine accepts your URL, the priority that your web site gets in a specific search could be at the bottom of the list, say a list of over 5,000 web sites, Mr. Cantor does one search and the results are over 2,000, Lesley is amazed, but doesn't point out to her audience that most likely, 1,980 of those sites wouldn't even be viewed by the searcher, just to download the top 20 and scan them could take over an hour. To show you this, I did the same search that Mr. Cantor did, "TWA 800." On Yahoo only 5 sites showed up and the first one was "TWA 800: Accident or Attack? - links to various missile attack theories about TWA Flight 800." This topic "Accident or Attack" has been brought up on many non-Internet media sources and the statement clearly points out these are theories. Those 5 sites that showed up were in the hands of Yahoo's people, they decided which ones would show up. On a search engine, the one Cantor used, Alta Vista, 4,262 sites showed up, the vast majority of these sites wouldn't even be read by the Internet population, and I did my search today, when Mr. Cantor did his search about 400 sites were all that showed up and the top one "TWA 800 cover-up," wasn't even in the top 5 when I did my search, someone either wiped out "TWA 800 cover-up" or buried it deeper in the search just since 60 minutes did the report. 60 Minutes, it's like your next story on June 28 about the guy locked up in Lebanon for 7 years and wanted some information from the government, the government didn't want him to have the info so he didn't get it, the Internet is the same, if the search engines don't want to list your URL, they won't, and even if they do, it could be buried so deep no one will find it. Also, most likely, large search engines will buy out the smaller ones, yes I'm theorizing, but mergers are very common on Wall Street, already Yahoo's market capitalization is large enough to be classified as a large cap stock. Shortly if not already, most Internet traffic will be controlled by a very small number of search engines and you don't need an MBA from Havard to know that.)

My web page Inside the Stock Market has been rejected by Yahoo several times and they don't even tell me why. I challenge 60 Minutes to read my web page and see if you can find any more inaccuracies or any more subjective material than what is in the Wall Street Journal. Yahoo has no problem taking on the Wall Street Journal, but for some reason they don't want my web page?

Lesley had Mr. Cantor search "investments" and see what he could find. Mr. Cantor enters the search and the results pop up, "Fast Cash...Instant Cash...Easy Money." Any of these phases could be found in any of several non-Internet related media sources, again, nothing unique to the Internet. However, Leslie shows amazement over what Mr. Cantor found on the Internet.

Lesley asks Mr. Cantor, "Could someone send an e-mail message, um, and make it look like it was coming from someone else?" You can do the same thing with regular mail, in fact, Lesley asked Mr. Cantor "can you sign my name?" It would be easier to sign Lesley's name with regular mail than e-mail, most e-mail doesn't even have a signature.

Lesley moves on to another interviewee, "Take this site [J. Orlin Grabbe's], hundreds of pages of conjecture and hearsay, masquerading as fact." I'm not supporting the site, but I do think that this statement made by Lesley accurately explains the so-called upstanding journalists and media sources that covered and are still covering Clinton's alleged sex life. Again, my point, what Lesley and 60 Minutes are saying about the Internet is no different than what is already out there without the Internet.

Lesley remarks, "an unsophisticated person really wouldn't be able to distinguish in terms of accuracy, validity, checking journalism and things like that." Lesley is talking about information found on the Internet. Again, no different than what's found on 60 Minutes. If someone "unsophisticated" watched this story they would think that anyone can have a web site and it will be view by thousands if not millions of people which is clearly misleading. Even in its short life, there are already more web pages than there are users of the WWW. The vast majority of web pages will not be read more than a few times a year, especially, relative to Yahoo's 50,000,000 hits a day.

Lesley goes on with her negative remarks about the Internet, "Forgery, fakery, falsehood, they're everywhere on the Internet." "Rumors are so rampant that cyperspace is becoming a dangerous place, especially for corporate America." First here's two stories on my web page that will clearly point out that rumors were around and in more dangerous places than the Internet, say at well known brokerage houses, the Wall Street Journal even has a column named "Heard it on the Street." The two stories are SEC: Is it Inside Information or a Rumor? and Business Week: Cyber Postings and the Spread of False Information.

I personally can say that I don't think corporate America is that worried about cyperpostings. Whenever I have a problem with a company, I write the company, if the problem is not resolved, I write the company again telling them that I am going to post my feelings on the Internet, the vast majority of the companies ignore the second letter just like they did the first. Yes, if they hear from someone other than myself about the story, and the company sees for itself that what I'm saying is being read by the general public, they will contact me. "Why are you saying those things about us on the Internet?" I tell them because they're true, you promised me a certain service and you failed to deliver, when I wrote you about it you ignore my complaint.

If you don't believe me, try it yourself. The companies know that most stories on the Internet are not going to be read by enough people to cause them any problems. And many companies have a tough-guy attitude anyway, they're not about to let any little guy push them around, even if the little guy only wants what the company promised them.

Lesley says, "It's in the news groups that rumors often start, like one false report on the day OJ Simpson was acquitted." Lesley who do you think started all the BS about OJ in the first place? It was CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, PPS, and all you so-called professional journalists, it wasn't the news groups. What I'm saying is that if the media had not started the frenzy about OJ in the first place, there wouldn't have been and rumors started on a news group.

Lesley concludes the story by saying, "Think about this, the next time your ninth grader goes on-line. I believe she's talking about all the BS that's on the Internet. I say think about this, think about when you were in school before the Internet, remember all that information that was fed to you, as you grew up, did you find out most of it was accurate and true? Also, think about why is 60 Minutes giving the Internet such a hard time, when just about everything they said negative about the Internet already existed way long before the Internet was even around and it all still exists in non-Internet related media sources.

I personally think the Internet is great, but it's probably because I remember my class in college called critical thinking. It was a class that basically said don't believe everything you read. By the way, I took that class way before the WWW was around.

I also like the WWW because after spending six hours writing this story it most likely would not of been read by the person I'm writing it to, but ended up it the trash. However, because I have a personal web page I can post it there and have about 500 people read it. Assuming I keep up with my web page by continually checking and making sure my page is still on as many search engines as I can get it on.

I will also do the same thing with this story that I do with my complaint letters to companies. I won't post it on the Internet until 60 Minutes has a chance to review it. Granted, they most likely won't, but at least I gave them the chance, three chances to be exact, because I'm sending a copy to 60 Minutes, Rome Hartman the producer and Lesley Stahl the interviewer. I realize that what I write might not be 100% accurate and that I may have missed something. Unfortunately, most media sources just don't have the time to spend on us little guys and that's probably what they don't like about the Internet, that is, the Internet will at least post the story and if someone does find it amongst all the other millions of web pages at least one person will read it, and wouldn't that be a shame.

Sincerely,