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| '''Brian Chase''' (born circa ]) is a ] citizen who posted false information on ], which led to the ]. {{ref|NYTSeigenthaler}} | '''Brian Chase''' (born circa ]) is a ] citizen who posted false information on ], which led to the ]. {{ref|NYTSeigenthaler}} | ||
Revision as of 19:31, 3 January 2006
Brian Chase (born circa 1967) is a United States citizen who posted false information on Misplaced Pages, which led to the John Seigenthaler Sr. Misplaced Pages biography controversy.
Chase was the operations manager of Rush Delivery in Nashville, Tennessee when he anonymously posted to Misplaced Pages from his employer's IP address on May 26, 2005. His post suggested that John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville, was believed to have been involved in the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy and had lived in the Soviet Union for several years. The article remained unedited for several months until Seigenthaler was made aware of the article and subsequently criticized Misplaced Pages in several media outlets.
Chase learned of the effect of his post through the news. Meanwhile, the IP address he had used was traced back to his company by Daniel Brandt, a commentator regarding privacy issues and the World Wide Web. Chase resigned from Rush Delivery on 9 December and delivered a handwritten apology that day to Seigenthaler. Chase said he had done it as a joke to shock a colleague, after he had found out anyone could edit Misplaced Pages; he thought that it was a "gag" web site. Seigenthaler encouraged Chase's boss to not accept his resignation.
In an interview with Daniel Terdiman of CNET News, Daniel Brandt set forth his views regarding privacy concerns arising from Brian Chase's role as a fifteen-minute newsmaker:
" . . . Misplaced Pages's criteria for whether someone merits a biography has an extremely low standard. For example, there's a page on Brian Chase. . . . Right now, newspapers should print his name because it's topical. But a few months from now, his name will sort of disappear from the Internet because newspapers don't rate that high on the search engines, and it's only up in Google news for a month. But Misplaced Pages articles rank very, very highly on all search engines and Brian Chase will shoot right up to the top with the Misplaced Pages.
"And when this poor guy is trying to send out his resume, and he never gets called back from interviews, how do you know that the people aren't Googling him when they get his resume and saying, 'Well, he did this thing.' The permanence becomes invasion of privacy even more so than getting your name in the newspaper."
Notes
- Seelye, Katharine Q (December 11, 2005). A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Misplaced Pages Prank. The New York Times.
- Terdiman, Daniel (December 15 2005). "Tracking down the Misplaced Pages prankster" ZDNet News. Retrieved December 27 2005.
Sources
- Page, Susan (December 11 2005). "Author apologizes for fake Misplaced Pages biography", USA Today. Retrieved December 12 2005.
- Mielczarek, Natalia (December 11 2005). Fake online biography created as 'joke' The Tennessean.
- Brandt, Daniel (December 5 2005). Reports of the incident and discovery of Brian Chase via wikipedia-watch.org. Retrieved December 11 2005.
- Terdiman, Daniel (December 15 2005). "Newsmaker: In search of the Misplaced Pages prankster" C|Net News.com. Retrieved December 15 2005.
- BBC, (December 12 2005) "Misplaced Pages joker eats humble pie".