The News Noose Tightens

Back fence gossip goes viral, and computers never forget

   Words matter, and often come back to haunt.
   In this day of ubiquitous recording devices, both pocket size and professional video units can preserve everything someone says or does for the world to see.
   This applies not only to politicians and other celebrities in the public eye, but also to police, flight attendants, and anyone else in the middle of any incident that attracts the attention of bystanders.
   Except that bystanders in this digital age no longer simply stand by and watch. They take out their devices and record the fuss.
   Next, they transmit the cellphone video to their Facebook page and to their local TV station, which passes it on to a news network, and within minutes, the whole world is watching.
   Soon, public outrage dominates the news cycle, embarrassing the perpetrators of what is perceived as mistreatment, and reaction sets in.
   Result: Employees are fired, police officers are suspended, corporate executives resign, and politicians demand new laws to deal with what not long ago would have been forgotten within hours or passed off as gossip.
   But the truth is no longer out there somewhere in a netherworld of unprovable speculation, but glares at viewers from computer and television screens worldwide.
   No longer can politicians claim they were misquoted, or their comments were "taken out of context," insisting that "what I really meant was ... " 
   The response from broadcast journalists now is this: "Roll the video. This is what you said and how you said it. If you meant something else, you should have said something else."
   Print journalists have the same documentary evidence to back up their coverage, and can post it on their newspaper's Internet page, with referrals to the more extensive story in the print edition.
   Many corporate types are so used to getting their own way, demanding that underlings do as they're told or lose their jobs, that when the business types go into politics they forget -- if they ever knew -- that journalists, especially the independent investigative reporter types, are not on the candidate's payroll.
   Indeed, some never learn that the quickest way to get a story in the paper is to try to keep it out.
   Moreover, the bullying chant of "fake news" sets up an answering chorus of "show me the evidence."
   Of the famous five W's of journalism -- Who, What, Where, When and Why -- the most important is the last one: Why.
   And to the charge of "fake news," the questions become, Why is it fake? Who says it's fake? What's fake about it? When did it become fake? Where is the evidence to prove its fakeness?

   Until the allegations can be supported by evidence, the burden of proof is on the allegators.