The media downing of Pierre Salinger: Journalistic mistrust of the Internet as a news source

Through analysis of historical listserv dialogue and traditional media dissection of a watershed debate-that a missile caused the TWA 800 crash on July 17, 1996-this study seeks to shed light on an early example of journalistic wariness and mistrust of the Internet as a news source. Specifically, we analyze the rhetoric of the late Pierre Salinger's connections to the historic incident, and the credibility of the Internet as a news source, as debated by professional journalists on the Internet and in mainstream media forums. A rhetorical analysis of how this debate was framed suggests that negative journalistic perceptions of the Internet's news credibility were already solidifying by the mid-1990s, and have continued to do so since that time.