The Messenger's Horse

Pierre Salinger's dramatic announcement earlier this month that he had proof of a "friendly fire" attack on TWA Flight 800 has been discredited, but in its wake, unfortunately, many newspapers and magazines took the opportunity to do some Internet-bashing.

The former presidential press secretary, speaking before a French audience that may have included relatives of doomed passengers, held up a document purportedly offering evidence that U.S. Navy planes had been deployed on maneuvers off the south shore of eastern Long Island at the time Flight 800 went down. It was a missile fired from one of the planes that hit the aircraft, Mr. Salinger said, breaking it in half. Afterward, he maintained, a cover-up took place at the highest levels of government.

An alert CNN reporter was the first to suspect that Mr. Salinger's mysterious document might in fact be a copy of a message that had begun circulating among World Wide Web news groups within days of the tragedy. When confronted with a duplicate, Mr. Salinger was nonplussed. "That's it," he said. "Where did you get it?"

When the source became known - or, rather, the source's chosen means of dissemination - a media storm broke. Oddly, it broke not so much over the head of Mr. Salinger, but over the Web itself. A case not of kill the messenger, but kill his horse.

The TWA document proved, said critics, that the Internet was the haunt of conspiracy theorists, not to mention gun freaks, religious extremists, militiamen, Satanists, and cults of every kind, a place where wives could be induced by smooth-spoken strangers to leave their husbands and imprisoned pedophiles could circulate the names and photographs of unsuspecting children.

All of which is true. It also is true that this new medium is a window on the world for the ill and housebound, a voice for the deaf and mute, an unparalleled exchange for scholars, a bottomless barrel of fun and games for young and old, and a font of information on just about any subject you can think of.

It can also be, quite literally, a lifesaver, as a Scotsman who had a heart attack while playing chess on the Web can attest. His opponent called the local police for help - from Australia.

Here on the South Fork, the possibilities of the World Wide Web and the Internet are just beginning to attract real attention. It would be a pity if misguided antipathy were allowed to interfere.