Should You Believe What You Read?

Posted Tuesday, October 1, 2002 at 5:01 PM Central

by John Couture

Welcome to the age of the Internet. Welcome to information age. And more importantly, welcome to the misinformation age.

Amid reports that the major studios were recruiting web savvy individuals to post positive things about their movies (and, in some cases, negative things about their competition's movies) on the Internet's most popular movie sites, two studios tried to explain their actions. Universal Vice Chairman Marc Schmuger did acknowledge the practice but downplayed the significance of it. "This is a technique used everywhere in corporate America. It's no different from the girls who go into bars to tout cell phones and vodka." He did try to curb the speculation of compensating these willing conspirators by stating that "they were unpaid volunteers expressing their unscripted enthusiasm."

Paramount, however, maintained its innocence claiming that "We [Paramount] don't do anything without full disclosure." Hmm, sounds fishy to me.

Of course, this whole story could be a plant. You never know. I can see it now, the next big thing on eBay: "To the highest bidder, I will shower your movies with online praise and adoration. Provided of course that they don't star Tom Green or contain the words 'Clones,' 'Pokemon' or 'Serving' in the title."