It is easy to be taken in by online content
Here is a personal example of why careful scrutiny of web content is necessary. I write a couple of blogs that allow me to focus on a variety of issues, but mostly I write about educational technology and general educational issues. One of my blogs is for short posts and links I think others might find useful. In late August, 2009, I encountered a story from the Washington Post about the decision to end the PBS program "Reading Rainbow" and generate a post with a link to this article. At one time Cindy was a reading teacher and we both have had a long term interest in reading. We were fans of the show and the comment within the newspaper article that the decision to cancel the show was partly due to a change in educational philosophy requiring a greater emphasis on phonics and spelling is the kind of thing that gets educational junkies interested. Note that the title of the article is "Did the Education Dept's Shift Help Kill PBS's "Reading Rainbow".
So, attempting to follow-up the story and perhaps generate an extended comment I did an online search and came across this article - My living nightmare of encouraging kids to read is over by LeVar Burton. After reading this story, but before I could write the blog piece, I tweeted (Twitter) the comment "wow, this Onion piece on Reading Rainbow is disturbing. Our son has done public television work. Wonder what he thinks." Luckily, before I made an even bigger fool of myself by writing a blog post on the topic, a former graduate student of mine and now professor tweeted back saying "Mark, you do know that The Onion publishes parodies". She was trying to be nice.
Ah, I do think I knew about "The Onion" - at least the paper version that used to be available on many college campuses. But, it is just so easy to accept the information that appears on your computer screen that it did not even occur to me to consider the source.