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Brian Chase (born circa 1967) is a United States citizen who abused Misplaced Pages by posting a hoax on the online public encyclopedia, 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, had 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. With pressure mounting, 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 not to accept his resignation.
Because of his central role in the larger controversy involving Seigenthaler, Chase had a profound impact on Misplaced Pages and became the center of a controversy involving the issue of what qualifies private persons as public figures. Few would argue that Chase is not newsworthy. However, but for his role as a "fifteen minute newsmaker" who made the Misplaced Pages edit heard round the world, Chase would still be a private person. At the same time, this assertion could be made for once private persons like Rosa Parks and Norma McCorvey (better known by her pseudonym Jane Roe), now famous as litigants in landmark United States Supreme Court decisions.
Notes
- Seelye, Katharine Q (December 11, 2005). A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Misplaced Pages Prank. The New York Times.
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.