Dateline NBC , which discovered the profile minutes before deadline, was the first to report on the America Online message. Reuters briefly picked up the story, citing NBC, before moving another story that exposed the profile as a hoax. In Great Britain, newspapers went wild. A headline in the Sunday Mirror shouted, hello, i'm the mad bomber . . . America Online sent out a press release the day after the NBC report warning that the McVeigh profile was bogus.
News sources have to be verified in the traditional way.
Adam Gaffin, the on-line editor of Network World , was one of the many journalists who failed to check the accuracy or authenticity of the comments posted by the Montana student pretending to be an enraged militia member. In retrospect, Gaffin said there were several ways to try to verify the authenticity of the posting. Charley Stough, a copy editor at the Dayton Daily News and respected Internet buff who publishes an on-line newsletter, was one of the few to follow up on the student's Internet message. He sent the student an e-mail message, asking if he would speak to a reporter. The student responded that he was only doing some on-line kidding, Stough says.