The Washington Post has an acid and devastatingly funny story here about a site we try oh-so-hard never to link to because we’ve been burned by some of its original reporting that is either overhyped or inaccurate (but if they make a mistake there’s almost never an aknowledgement – the story just vanishes). Read it in full.
But there is a serious issue. The underlying theme is how a “controversy” can be raging because a prominent reporter, blogger or writer says so. In this case, the blogs, talk shows, etc. didn’t start talking about this supposedly outrageous celebrity pronouncement until it appeared on this other site.
Bloggers often talk about how the media has a pack mentality, but on a “story” like this it’s also clear that weblogs fall into the same trap of becoming part of a pack. Somebody see it on that site, then wants to do something on it because it gains legitimacy have been written for and posted on that first site. Then someone sees one weblog has it, so they do something on it. Suddenly the Internet is abuzz with a controversy that wasn’t one until the first site declared it — with little hard evidence that an authentic controversy was raging elsewhere except on the writer’s keyboard.
This story (as some others on that site) was downright silly. It fell in the category of a story that my former journalism prof said was a “Who cares? So what? story.” Also, if the celebrity was crucified over his alleged comment it would be yet ANOTHER instance of a installing a Dictatorship of the PC Police which, by the way, is staffed by people on the right and the left and, sadly, at times by those in between.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.