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Circular reporting, or false confirmation, is a situation in
source criticism where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in reality comes from only one source.
In many cases, the problem happens mistakenly through sloppy reporting or intelligence-gathering. However, the situation can also be intentionally contrived by the source or reporter as a way of reinforcing the widespread belief in its information.
This problem occurs in a variety of fields, including
intelligence gathering
This is a list of intelligence gathering disciplines.
HUMINT
Human intelligence (HUMINT) are gathered from a person in the location in question. Sources can include the following:
* Advisors or foreign internal defense (FID) personnel wor ...
,
journalism
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...
, and scholarly
research
Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...
. It is of particular concern in
military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...
because the original source has a higher likelihood of wanting to pass on misinformation, and because the chain of reporting is
more prone to being obscured. It is also a problem in journalism and the development of conspiracy theories, in which the primary goal of a source spreading unlikely or hard-to-believe information is to make it appear to be widely known.
The case of the 2002
Niger uranium forgeries
The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI (the former military intelligence agency of Italy), which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from N ...
was a classic instance of circular reporting by intelligence agencies.
Examples of circular reporting
''Roots''
Author
Alex Haley grew up hearing the
oral history that his family's first ancestor to enter the United States was a young man named Kunta Kinte, who lived near the Kamby Bolongo, or
Gambia River
The Gambia River (formerly known as the River Gambra) is a major river in West Africa, running from the Fouta Djallon plateau in north Guinea westward through Senegal and The Gambia to the Atlantic Ocean at the city of Banjul. It is navigabl ...
, and was kidnapped into slavery when out gathering wood. As an adult, Haley researched his family genealogy for what would become the 1976 novel ''
Roots: The Saga of an American Family'', and he traveled to the Gambia in an attempt to confirm the family history of Kinte. Haley told the story of Kinte to a seminar of Gambian tribal experts, who searched for a
griot
A griot (; ; Manding: jali or jeli (in N'Ko: , ''djeli'' or ''djéli'' in French spelling); Serer: kevel or kewel / okawul; Wolof: gewel) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and/or musician.
The griot is a repos ...
—an oral historian—who might be able to confirm the story. Ultimately, Haley met a man named Kebba Fofana in the town of Juffure who was able to relate a story of Kunta Kinte that was strikingly similar to Haley's lifelong family history, an apparent confirmation that grounded Haley's novel (as well as the landmark
1977 miniseries adapted from the novel). After publication, however, it was discovered that griot oral histories were not reliable for dates before the 19th century, that Fofana was not a true griot, and that Fofana's confirmation of Haley's history was ultimately a retelling of the story Haley himself told Gambian experts.
[MacDonald, Edgar. "A Twig Atop Running Water -- Griot History," ''Virginia Genealogical Society Newsletter'', July/August, 1991.][''The Roots of Alex Haley''. Documentary. Directed by James Kent. ]BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
Bookmark, 1996.
Iraq War
In 2001, the
Niger uranium forgeries
The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI (the former military intelligence agency of Italy), which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from N ...
, documents initially released by
SISMI
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (abbreviated SISMI, ''Military Intelligence and Security Service'') was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services app ...
(the former military intelligence agency of Italy), seemed to depict an attempt made by
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...
in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
to purchase
yellowcake uranium powder from
Niger
)
, official_languages =
, languages_type = National languages[Iraq disarmament crisis
The Iraq disarmament crisis was claimed as one of primary issues that led to the multinational invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003. Since the 1980s, Iraq was widely assumed to have been producing and extensively running the programs of biologi ...](_blank)
. They were referenced by other intelligence agencies to convince their governments or public that such a purchase had taken place.
In 2014, the Chairman of the US
Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq
The Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence (formally, the Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq) was the report by the United States Senate Select Committee on ...
told NBC's Tim Russert that a single informant, '
Curveball' "had really provided 98 percent of the assessment as to whether or not the Iraqis had a biological weapon." This was in despite the fact that "nobody inside the U.S. government had ever actually spoken to the informant—except
or a singlePentagon analyst, who concluded the man was an alcoholic and utterly useless as a source."
Other examples
In early 2012, a
TV Tropes
TV Tropes is a wiki website that collects and documents descriptions and examples of plot conventions and devices, which it refers to as tropes, within many creative works. Since its establishment in 2004, the site has shifted focus from coveri ...
user named Tunafish claimed that a bug existed in ''
Civilization
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).
...
'' that caused Gandhi to be much more aggressive. Tunafish did not provide any proof. The repetition of this false information led to the "
Nuclear Gandhi" internet meme.
In 2018,
Shehroze Chaudhry was identified as an active member of the
Islamic State
An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
who participated in the killing of several individuals, through reporting involving a ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' podcast, among others. The podcast and other outlets referenced blog posts authored by Chaudhry starting in 2016. The podcast was taken by government officials and others as evidence of the crime; however, the original posts were unverified and later renounced by the author.
Circular reporting on Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
is sometimes criticized for being used as a source of circular reporting, particularly a variant where an unsourced claim in a Wikipedia article is repeated by a reliable source, often without citing the article; which is then added as a source to the claim on Wikipedia.
History of citogenesis
The first recorded use of the term citogenesis to describe this phenomenon was in November 2011, when
Randall Munroe
Randall Patrick Munroe (born October 17, 1984) is an American cartoonist, author, and engineer best known as the creator of the webcomic ''xkcd''. Munroe has worked full-time on the comic since late 2006. In addition to publishing a book of th ...
used it in an ''
xkcd
''xkcd'', sometimes styled ''XKCD'', is a webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe. The comic's tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". Munroe states on the comic's website that the name ...
'' comic strip. The
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
is attributed as being a
homophone, homophonic wordplay on '
cytogenesis', the formation, development and variation of
biological cells.
An article in the magazine ''
Slate'' referenced the four-step process described in the comic, to raise awareness about the risks of Wikipedia-mediated citogenesis. This type of circular reporting has been described as particularly hard-to-catch because of the speed of revisions of modern webpages, and the lack of "as of" timestamps in citations and "last updated" timestamps on pages online.
Inspired by the comic, Wikipedia editors have since maintained an internal list of citogenesis incidents to monitor its prevalence.
Wikipedia advises researchers and journalists to
be wary of, and generally avoid, using Wikipedia as a direct source, and to focus instead on verifiable information found in an article's cited references. Researchers and Wikipedians alike are advised to note the retrieved-on date of any web citation, to support identification of the earliest source of a claim.
Examples on Wikipedia
Prominent examples of false claims that were propagated on Wikipedia and in news sources because of circular reporting:
*2007: Wikipedia and ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'' propagated the false information that comedian
Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (born 13 October 1971) is an English actor, comedian, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his creation and portrayal of the fictional satirical characters Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno Gehard, and Admiral ...
had worked at
Goldman Sachs.
* 2008: A student arbitrarily added,
"also known as....Brazilian Aardvarks"
/span> to the article on the coati
Coatis, also known as coatimundis (), are members of the family Procyonidae in the genera ''Nasua'' and ''Nasuella''. They are diurnal mammals native to South America, Central America, Mexico, and the southwestern United States. The name ...
, leading to subsequent commentary on the mammal that mentioned this nickname. Outlets repeating the nickname included ''The Independent'', the '' Daily Express'', the ''Metro
Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to:
Geography
* Metro (city), a city in Indonesia
* A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center
Public transport
* Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urb ...
'', ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'', the '' Daily Mail'', a book published by the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
, and a scholarly work published by the University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
.
* 2009: The middle name "Wilhelm" was falsely added into Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg
Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg (born 5 December 1971), known professionally as Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, is a German businessman and politician of the Christian Soc ...
's name. This was propagated by a raft of publications, including German and international press.
*2009: An incorrect release year of 1991 was added to the Wikipedia article of the Casio F-91W watch. The BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
repeated this in a 2011 article. Communication with primary sources repeatedly confirmed a 1989 release year, but as a reliable secondary source, the BBC's use of 1991 made the misinformation difficult to remove. In 2019,