Have You Heard the One About Crazy Rumors?

It is not often that the world witnesses an urban legend in the making, that we can actually pinpoint its birth, tracking the electric convergence of truth, rumor, fear and hype that are the sparks of life to a tall tale.

But such was the case on a recent Monday. First there were reports of a dog whimpering in Compton Creek; it had possibly been thrown off a bridge by two or more teens. Then the story grew wings.

Several dogs had been thrown from the bridge and left to suffer. Some swore they’d seen dogs thrown, others merely had heard of such torture. By Tuesday, the L.A. Department of Animal Care and Control was receiving calls from worried citizens. One of its officers had publicly speculated that dogs were being dropped as part of a gang initiation rite. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a wire story that began, “People apparently have thrown at least 16 dogs, mostly pit bull mixes, to their deaths off bridges into concrete-lined Compton Creek, an animal control officer said Thursday.” One worried child speculated that kids could be next.

This much is true: there really was a black Labrador mix stuck in Compton Creek, unable to walk because its back was broken. The injuries were consistent with a fall or being hit by a car. The rest was what happens when the sometimes overheated public imagination catches fire. And the media, in search of instant sound bites, can feed the flames. Dissecting these instant urban myths is an exercise in psychology, folklore and media studies.

“It only takes one media outlet to pick it up and then it’s everywhere,” said H. Aaron Cohl, author of “Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death? How Pessimism, Paranoia and a Misguided Media Are Leading Us Toward Disaster.” “It’s the power of the press.”

When inexplicable, unsettling events occur, people fill in the blanks with narratives that reflect their own concerns. “Part of what these stories do is allow people to express their fears and prejudices in a socially acceptable way. They’re a vehicle for that,” said Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology at USC. “When we talk about gangs, most of us are thinking about adolescents or minority groups,” said Glassner, author of “Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things.” “It becomes a way of expressing that fear and bias against those groups. After all, they don’t have a spokesperson, and if they did, no one would listen anyway.”

These are the safest times in human history, Glassner said, yet people constantly fret about all kinds of odd and unlikely dangers.

Many blame the media for perpetrating an atmosphere of risk. As Cohl put it, “People in this country are taught that if the source is credible it must be true.”

Which is how the Washington Post came to publish on its front page a story about how a Pentecostal minister in Rep. Gary Condit’s hometown of Ceres told the FBI the congressman had had an affair with his 18-year-old daughter. The story was picked up by other newspapers and magazines, and commented on by a slew of columnists, including at the Los Angeles Times. Later, however, the minister said he had lied. Yet he really had said his daughter had an affair with Condit, so the initial stories were true.

Which means that even the truth isn’t always accurate.

Since July 6, when an 8-year-old Florida boy’s arm was torn off by a bull shark (it was reattached), reports of shark bites and shark sightings have created the impression that Florida’s waters are more shark-laden than normal. That is not the case.

“From our standpoint, as far as shark bites, this has been a normal year,” said Terri Behling, public relations manager for the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla. Last year, 34 people were bitten by sharks in Florida’s waters, the year before, 25 and in 1998, 22 people were bitten. “Our scientists attribute [that] to the increasing number of people who are in the water--90 million people visited Florida beaches last year,” Behling said.

This tendency to believe the worst if the source seems credible, however, is in conflict with a powerful strain of skepticism.

Americans have an abiding belief that they are constantly being lied to--by politicians, by the government, by the media, by attorneys, advertisers and corporations to name a few. For example, a CNN poll about a 50-year-old alleged UFO sighting at Roswell, N.M., found that 80% of Americans think the government is concealing knowledge of extraterrestrial life.

An indelible fear of an unpredictable world is always present.

“It’s the idea of an unseen enemy,” said Dr. William Callahan, president of the Orange County Psychiatric Society. “There is also the perception people have of not being very powerful, that powerful forces outside of one sort of another are doing evil and unseen things, so people band together around a common enemy which can create a sense of cohesion.”

Part of the problem is that for every horrific tale that is positively ludicrous, there is a ludicrous tale that is absolutely true.

Were baby alligators in New York flushed into the sewer system where they grew to maturity and to this day gobble unsuspecting public-works employees? No.

Did an eight-foot wave of molasses ever roll down the streets of Boston, leaving dozens of people dead and injured in its wake? Yes. (In 1919, a 2.5 million-gallon tank on the grounds of the United States Industrial Alcohol Co. exploded, sending a wall of molasses through the streets at a speed of 35 mph. The molasses was to be used in the production of rum.)

“I think we are buffeted on a daily basis with all kinds of messages and we’re susceptible,’ said Norman Solomon, a media critic and columnist for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal, media-watchdog group. “We are, as a people, lied to so routinely that if you believe a fraction of the TV commercials that you see, in practice you get used to being a gullible fool,” Solomon said.

But the tall tales and plain-out lies add up, creating a world where it is easy to believe in unpredictable brutality. It happens even to those who should know better.

“I went to traffic school a few months ago in Malibu,” Cohl said, “And the guy says, ‘You know, if you’re driving at night and you see a car coming at you without its headlights on, well the tendency is to flick your lights. But don’t do that! It’s is part of a gang initiation.”’ New gang members drive around with their car lights off and then when someone flashes lights at them, the instructor told the class, that’s when they shoot.

“Then a few weeks later I was having a dinner with friends in New York and I found myself telling about flashing their lights and saying, “Don’t do that, the gangs will shoot you!”