Homework question - Provide some specific examples of common urban myths (noise) that have become reality after they have leaked into media.

More info on homework topic- Using your Internet browsers, provide some specific examples where outright lies or urban myths have leaked into the mainstream media, press, classrooms, offices and boardrooms. You may also examine other forms of media for this assignment such as, broadcast radio and/or TV including, entertainment news media, blogs or, other popular mediums used to distribute information as well as, the people who “send” the messages including, for example, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, or radio personalities Rush Limbaugh or Don Imus.

Please help! I have searched and searched the internet for any example of this and cannot find anything!

So what have you got so far as the instructions seems quite straightforward.
We're happy to help, but we won't do all the work for you.

I have not found anything by searching for "myths that became true" or "lies leaked that are truth", etc... The assignment is asking for outright lies or myths that became reality and I am having a hard time finding anything that fits this description. I have found suspicion of "facts" that could be true, but are still suspicion. Most of the information I am finding has not proven to be true yet. While snopes.com has some myths that are proven to be true, I have not found any that were leaked to the media that have influenced popular opinion for better or worse.

Have a read through Snopes here: snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages
There are many examples of such stories, many concern Viruses that Microsoft etc can't stop, or various end of the world hoaxes, like the recent Camping one...

I have read through these (as I mentioned, I have read through almost all of these on Snopes - in almost all the categories). The problem is that many of these have been proven to be False and not True. The ones proven to be True were never leaked to media and have not influenced popular opinion. The viruses are false, the "end of the world hoaxes" are false (as the world hasn't ended)... I need to find examples of myths or lies that have become reality or truth and have influenced popular opinion.

Also, for clarification, as you mentioned "We're happy to help, but we wont do all the work for you." I am not looking for someone to do all the work for me! I am trying to find help with locating a few examples. This portion of the assignment is the beginning of the 8-10 page paper I need to write. I would be writing the paper, and I have completed the research on the other topics needed to be included: including the affects of "noise", interpersonal communication and discerning the difference between knowledge from noise, truth and wisdom from babble. I simply need some assistance in finding examples of when "noise" became truth...