THE Korean woman behind the counter in a 10 cents and up store along 23rd Street in Manhattan smiled as soon as I came in to buy chocolates. “Are you Korean?”

“No, I’m Filipino!” I said quickly, showing off Filipino pride.

“Oh, Cory!” she exclaimed with a big smile.

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That was after Cory spoke before the American Congress.

Imagine how a Filipino feels in times like this, when the world takes notice of what we can do to stand out.

Filipinos who could do something and make a difference a few hours before the Edsa Revolution put in their bit, like the late writer Lina Espina Moore who helped make sandwiches which other groups took to Edsa to give to the rallyists. Cory showed the way.

The moment, the event, history related to Cory---no matter how far in time it now seems or less in significance in the mind of politicians until they can use it ---will always be unforgettable almost to all of us. That’s why it must be that the wrong news some days ago, about Cory having died, wasn’t meant to hurt. It was misinformation, not quite gossip or idle talk.

Social science researchers use the mouth-to-ear test where a story is whispered to another and the next and still more. The news bearer doesn’t repeat nor clarify, the receiver doesn’t ask any question. At the end of each test, the story was changed.

It’s not so unlike the way you hear news from the TV in the sala which you quickly plugged on and walked past it to cook breakfast or fix the bathroom pipe. You’d stop and ask, thinking someone in the family was watching the news. “Was that about Cory?” But no one was downstairs except you. And yet, there was the fear in your mind about Cory’s condition. Was she…?

In a study by psychologists, the story, or rumor, grows shorter as it travels, 70 percent of details lost after the first 5th or 6th mouth-to-ear proliferation.

Social researchers say rumors run and, somewhere in time, level off, details are dropped or changed along the way, shifts aren’t even noticed, and finally through media, it becomes heaven’s decree.

An acquaintance went home for the weekend to Mactan and was met by a niece who told her the news about a couple of students caught in a sex act in one of the washrooms in her school in the city. It was a juicy item which my friend pushed back. “Who told you?” she asked the niece.

The girl said, “Sa radyo! Radyo na gud, tinuod gyud!”

The woman was going to explain to her that she, with school authorities, had checked this and found it false. But the story had gone through its flourishing best, the way rumors get nurtured.

Imagine a rumor kicking to go. In leveling off, some details are dropped out as somewhere along the chain one story receiver starts to change data. The new info (although not seen as such) is “assimilated,” as researchers would put it, and distorts the information according to the bearers’ motivation (all this hopefully unconsciously).

Then you have misinformation, disinformation, rumors, gossip…Or as a television station puts it, you have spin.

One could use the time in which to verify rumors. Take note, a rumor could have a life of its own and run off in its own time.

But I still believe that the news on Cory was not intended to hurt, no matter what the Administration or Opposition say. Something is still good about the Filipino, even during election time. He would go deep into himself to retrieve the old love for all (not just for party members) in the ancient Malayan community, and the strength of will to stay honorable.

(ecuizon@gmail.com)