What's In A Rumour?

rumour or  ( US ) rumor  (ˈruːmə)

— n  
1.  a. information, often a mixture of truth and untruth, passed around verbally 
     b. ( in combination ): a rumour-monger  
2.  gossip or hearsay 
3.  archaic din or clamour 
4.  obsolete fame or reputation

What's in a rumour?  Is it the gossip that is spread around by different sources or are rumours based on fact?  I am sure that at some point in your life you have played the childhood game of Broken Telephone where there is no winner, just pure entertainment value when you comparing the original and final messages.

Other's would say that rumours foreshadow what is yet to come.  That in order to start a rumour you need some sort of evidence to rely it on.

What a rumour doesn't require, is the evidence to be fully 'trust worthy'.  It could be something as small as a fantastic 'photoshopped' picture.

Or someone that has been misquoted or misinterpreted,  

"Yes, it's like the Paralympics - people who are not quite as good but overall it's still exciting."

But when does a rumour become more?

Is it when a more 'trustworthy' mediabacks the facts that the original source quoted?

Or is it when one or more of the parties involved comments about it?

Many people seem to dismiss rumours as poor media coverage but how many times has a rumour come to fact?

For example, after a three year hiatus, there was a rumour sparked by a small media outlet that Michael Schumacher would be back behind the F1 wheel. Many people laughed it off with the retort that a three year sabbatical was too long. He didn't have the drive anymore. Boy were they wrong.

Again, at the break of the new year, 2011, another rumour was overheard that Narain Karthikeyan was going to be drive.  Out on an even longer break, we witnessed HRT hiring a driver that last raced in 2005.

So, when does a rumour become more than just a whisper passed from person to person?  When it becomes more fact than fiction?

So what you read as 'secret meetings' and see as a funny photo shopped magazine cover, you may actually be seeing an ironic foreshadowing of what is yet to come.

I, for one, will no longer overlook a rumour that has fact base background as I don't want to wake up one Sunday morning to find myself in some foreign F1 'alternate universe' where someone who we could only picture in Red would be wearing silver.  When someone who has only ever worn white could be seen strolling through the paddock in blue.