Alternative title: “Don’t believe everything you see on TV… or in the newspaper… or in a press release …”

Alternative alternative title: “Multiple layers of fact-checkers and editors strike again!”

The local Fox affiliate here in South Bend, WSJV Channel 28, ran a brief story at the end of tonight’s 10pm news quoting something called the “Oxford Hair Foundation” as saying that redheads may be “extinct” by the end of the century. Supposedly, the recessive gene that gives people red hair will “die out.” Being a redhead myself, I thought this was interesting and potentially blogworthy — and I was also a little skeptical. Why would this be the case? Why now? Redheads have been around for all of human history; why would we suddenly die out? And what the heck is the “Oxford Hair Foundation,” anyway? They say that with a name like Smuckers, it has to be good… and I say, with a name like the “Oxford Hair Foundation,” you have to be skeptical.

On both of these points, the explanation in the TV report was grossly inadequate. But hey, that’s par for the course with local TV news. So I decided to investigate further. I went to Google News and did a quick search. Surprisingly, I only came up with one article, from the Sydney Morning Herald’s blog. Some of the language used in that article was darn near identical to what I’d just heard on TV (immediately suggesting that this is press-release “journalism” at work), and again, the scientific explanation was extremely thin:

Redheads beware! You may be headed the way of dodos, dinosaurs and Whitney Houston’s career. Britain’s Oxford Hair Foundation predicts that, by the end of the century, carrot-tops might have disappeared from the face of the Earth.

The foundation says that only 4 per cent of the world’s population carry the recessive gene for red hair and that, over time, brunettes, blondes and pepperheads will control human hair colour with their dominant genes.

Unsatisfied and still a bit skeptical, I decided to check out this so-called “Oxford Hair Foundation.” That’s when I got really skeptical. Take a look at their website. It contains an very unprofessional-looking message that states:

The Oxford Hair Foundation website has decided to transfer its information to P &G Beauty Science instead. Thank you for your visit.

Well, what the heck does that mean? What sort of “foundation” would “transfer its information” to another website? Specifically, a website run by Procter & Gamble — a company which, oh by the way, makes hair-care products? Curiouser and curiouser.

I next consulted Wikipedia, but they don’t have a page for the “Oxford Hair Foundation,” which made me even more skeptical. If I’m important enough to be on Wikipedia, surely a legitimate scientific organization would be, too. Right? So what gives?

At this point I moved out of Google News and back into regular Google searching — and guess what I found? A bunch of random, miscellaneous websites from various different dates parroting this same alleged study. Here’s one from November 2006, and one from March 2006. WTF? Even if this “study” is legit, how is it “news” if it’s months old?

But the final blow to the credibility of this “story” comes from a search on the new Google News Archive. Check it out… there are numerous stories from reputable news organizations, going back years, repeating the same bunch of crap. For example:

On May 9, 2005, an column by Robin L. Flanigan in the Rochester Democrat-Chronicle, which got picked up in syndication by the Seattle Times, Arizona Republic, Tucson Citizen and Indianapolis Star, stated:

If predictions by the Oxford Hair Foundation come to pass, the number of natural redheads everywhere will continue to dwindle until there are none left by the year 2100.

The reason, according to scientists at the independent institute in England, which studies all sorts of hair problems, is that just 4 percent of the world’s population carries the red-hair gene. The gene is recessive and therefore diluted when carriers produce children with people who have the dominant brown-hair gene.

Dr. John Gray’s explanation of his foundation’s findings: “The way things are going, red hair will either be extremely rare or extinct by the end of the century.”

All that may sound very familiar when you read this United Press International article from August 3, 2004:

Dr. John Gray of the Oxford Hair Foundation says natural red hair may be gone in 55 years.

“The way things are going, red hair will either be extremely rare or extinct,” he said.

The problem is that just 4 percent of the population carries the red hair gene, known as MC1R. Because the gene is recessive, it is diluted whenever carriers have children with people who have the stronger brown hair gene.

And now let’s travel back in time a little further, to this Irish Voice’s report from March 31, 2004, which discusses the results of what it calls a “special report this week”:

Red hair, say scientists in a report by the Oxford Hair Foundation, is in retreat because a maximum of just 4% of the world’s population carry the gene.

Because the gene is recessive, it is diluted whenever carriers of the gene have children with people who have the stronger brown hair gene.

Dr. John Gray of the Oxford Hair Foundation said black and brown haired people are wiping out the red hair gene.

“The way things are going red hair will either be extremely rare or extinct by the end of the century,” he said.

Gee, that quote sounds awfully familiar. How does Dr. Gray remember to say the exact same words across the years like that? Or could it be that these “quotes” are actually coming from a press release? Hmm.

Anyway, continuing with my Google News Archive sleuthing, here’s an article from November 17, 2003 in Britain’s The Mirror. Remember how the 2004 article said the findings were released “this week”? Well…

Redheads could become a thing of the past within a century, scientists revealed yesterday. …

Dr Desmond Tobin, a hair cell biologist at Bristol University, said: “As the amount of migration, intermarriage and mixing increases, we will see them all but disappear.”

He unveiled his findings at a conference organised by research centre, the Oxford Hair Foundation.

One wonders if the reporter actually went to this “conference,” or merely read about it in a press release. I have a guess.

I could go on; there are various other articles out there, all parroting the same information. But I think you get the point. Clearly, this is not a legitimate news story. I have no idea whether the science is correct, but even if it is, this isn’t “news.” Yet it’s been reported as news again and again, in multiple reputable sources, over the years. It’s really quite deplorable (and also hilarious) that it’s so easy to fool so many journalists. All it takes a press release and a prayer! Clearly, this “Oxford Hair Foundation,” whatever it is, has discovered that if you send out a press release announcing a “new” study every six months or so, some sap in some newsroom somewhere will believe it, and will write a story about it. And if you’re really lucky, the article will get picked up in syndication, and you’ll have lots of new articles, all stemming from one years-old press release!

Memo to journalists and aspiring journalists: reading a press release, and retyping it with a few minor word changes to avoid charges of plagiarism, IS NOT REPORTING. IT IS NOT JOURNALISM. IT IS TRANSCRIPTION. To be a reporter, you need to actually report. That involves doing research, making phone calls, and actually … you know … talking to people. To make sure they actually exist. To verify information. To get new quotes, not three-year-old ones from press releases. To make sure “independent foundations” with fancy names aren’t just Procter & Gamble front groups.

Several ironclad rules of journalism were blatantly disregarded by the various reporters and news organizations that ran these stories. First and foremost, it is never, ever, ever, ever acceptable to print something as a direct quote when you’re lifting it from a press release, unless of course you say in the article that you lifted it from a press release (which no self-respecting journalist would do, because nobody wants to admit that they are engaging in press-release journalism). This flows from the general rule that, in order to quote someone, you must either: a) have heard the quote yourself, or b) mention in the article where you got it from (i.e., who heard it, or claims they heard it). This is why you often read articles that say things like, “so-and-so told the Associated Press that…” or “so-and-so was quoted in the New York Times as saying that…” This is a non-negotiable, indispensible rule of journalistic credibility. If Person A tells you that Person B said something, you cannot quote Person B directly on that basis, because you don’t know for a fact whether Person B said what Person A claims he said. You can only quote Person A, because they are the only person you spoke with directly. Likewise, you can’t quote a line from a press release as if you heard the quoted person say it, because you have no idea whether they actually said it — all you know is that somebody typed it into a press release!

Another rule that was broken: you must give your readers/viewers adequate information to make their own judgments about the credibility of your sources. Specifically, the Oxford Hair Foundation should not, under any circumstances, be cited as a source — let alone described as an “independent institute” — without mentioning that it’s run by Procter & Gamble (or, to quote P & G, “forged by a partnership between Oxford Dermatology and P&G Hair Care”). Just because it describes itself as “independent” (as the Internet Wayback Machine shows that its website did before “transferring its information” to P&G sometime between August 27 and November 27, 2005), doesn’t mean it’s actually independent. That’s a judgment for your readers/viewers to make. And this reader/viewer, for one, is thinking that Procter & Gamble might just have an ulterior motive for making consumers think that red hair is getting rapidly more rare … and thus more exclusive … and thus more “cool” … and thus more desirable as a hair-dye color. Just saying!

I could be wrong — the science behind this oft-announced “study” could be legit — but Procter & Gamble’s involvement is certainly, unquestionably relevant information that must be included in any story about it.

But of course, I don’t think these journalists even realized that they were giving their readers and viewers incomplete information, because they never looked into it. They never took the most basic, initial step of Googling the “Oxford Hair Foundation” to figure out what it is. If they had, they would have immediately discovered what I discovered: that the whole thing is fishy. And so we have a third rule of journalism broken: you have to actually research your stories. You can’t just uncritically repeat information from a press release. That’s not just unwise, it’s unethical, because simply put, you’re lying to the public. You’re conveying that you know more than you do, that you’ve actually looked into this story and have verified the information you’re stating as fact. When you publish a news story, you are throwing the weight of your credibility as a reporter behind the facts in that story, saying in essence, “This is true.” Yet in reality, all these reporters did was repeat words from a piece of paper that came through the fax machine. They had no idea whether any of it is true.

It’s important to recognize that, although it took me more than an hour to compose this post, it took me a matter of seconds to become skeptical of the report I saw on TV, and a matter of minutes (like one or two minutes) to realize that something was seriously amiss. It didn’t take a Google News or Google News Archive search to do that — all it took was a simple Google search and a glance at the website of the alleged “Foundation.” But the fine folks at WSJV-TV, the Sydney Morning Herald and elsewhere apparently couldn’t be bothered to do that.

You may wonder why I’ve devoted so much time, energy and blog space to what is admittedly a rather minor issue. One answer is simply that it’s fun to discover something that others have missed, and make fun of them for missing it. :) But the more serious answer is that this minor issue is indicative of a couple of major issues that plague journalism today. Those issues are gullibility and laziness.

Gullibility comes into play because these reporters clearly never stopped, as I did, and questioned the basic premise of the press release they received. They never thought, “Hmm, that sounds a bit fishy.” I expect such behavior from the average citizen, as I long ago accepted that skepticism is a trait that’s sorely lacking in society at large (as proven by the abundance of self-evidently bogus e-mail rumors, chain letters and such that otherwise intelligent people nevertheless idiotically believe and pass on). But from journalists, I expect better. The innate ability to maintain a healthy skepticism — not cynicism, but skepticism — is crucial for any journalist.

As for laziness, well, I think that one is pretty obvious. Even if a journalist isn’t initially skeptical of a story, it is still obviously necessary (indeed, ethically mandated, as I mentioned above) to research it before reporting it. And, again, even the tiniest bit of cursory research (e.g., Google) would have revealed this “news” story to be a fraud. Thus, we can surmise that no research was done before these stories were written, and no fact-checking occurred before they went public. None at all. Needless to say, that is the height of laziness.

Alas, laziness is rampant among journalists at all levels, and it’s a big part of the reason why the profession — which I once aspired to be a part of — is held is such low esteem. Yeah, bias sucks. Yeah, sensationalism sucks. But if so many journalists weren’t so damn lazy, the quality of journalism would skyrocket like you wouldn’t believe. In fact, often times it’s laziness that creates bias and sensationalism. (A lazy journalist won’t think hard enough about a story to see past his or her own biases. A lazy journalist also won’t consider any angles other than the most obviously sensational ones, even though those angles might actually be more interesting and newsworthy.) And here we have an absolute, slam-dunk case of journalistic laziness. So forgive me for belaboring it, but this story honestly makes me think, “HOLY COW… they didn’t really do that, did they! They’re not really that lazy and incompetent, are they? Why yes… yes, they are!”

Anyway, I hope that the next time some newspaper or TV station runs a story about how the Oxford Hair Foundation has released a new (!) study claming that redheads are going extinct, somebody will run a Google search, find this post, and get a good laugh out of it. Better yet, maybe some newspaper or TV reporter will get a press release, Google it, find this post, and save themselves the embarrassment of running a bogus story in the first place. Wouldn’t that be something?