Editing process makes journalism
“It’s not true. Nobody is getting sick from fentanyl-bombing.”
Ned Seaton, the publisher of the Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury (a sister publication of The Sheridan Press) recently used his weekly column to shoot down a rumor making the rounds on Facebook. In doing so, he made a bigger point that we think bears sharing.
The Facebook post claimed a person supposedly was going around Manhattan planting fentanyl on restaurant glasses. The post included a photo of a dark-haired thin man in a black shirt at a bar. It said the alleged doper had a spider tattoo and “claims to be a vampire,” and that the Riley County Police Department was “in the process of tracking him down.” The post also claimed that at least one person had already gotten sick from fentanyl exposure.
“We of course did what professional independent journalists do: We checked it out,” Seaton wrote. “We called the police department — as it turned out, bringing it to their attention — and they made contact with the person shown in the photo. That person cooperated with the cops, and there was no evidence of any fentanyl, or fentanyl-laced gloves, or any of that.
“In ancient times — say, 2010 — here’s how this would have evolved, had it even gotten this far: Somebody would have sent this to us at the paper, telling us we need to get the word out to the community about the imminent danger. We would have gone to the cops to ask them to verify, and they would have said, ‘nope, nothing to it.’ And that would be that. No story.
“In journalism, we check out all kinds of things that go nowhere. It’s a real bummer, in the sense that reporters always want to break a big story. You know, ‘The Mayor is on the take!’ or ‘The FBI has parabolic listening devices at Lake Elbo!’ or ‘Bob Stoops has bought a house at Colbert Hills!’
“The stories that we publish take quite a bit of time, because we have to talk to multiple people and then check out what those people say. We also spend time digging up and combing through public records to get those stories. But that’s only the part of the work that you actually see — we also check out lots of stuff that we never publish. ‘Reporting yourself out of a story,’ we call it.
“That process — the editing process, basically — is what journalism is really about.
“Do you, or your ‘friends,’ or your friends’ ‘friends,’ adhere to those standards? Probably not. I know I seem to be wagging my finger at you here, and I don’t mean to sound like such a nag. I would imagine a lot of people that passed along the fentanyl post did so with the best of intentions — they wanted to protect others from what appeared to be a serious threat to health and safety.
“But what they were doing, it turns out, is the modern equivalent of a witch hunt. Fortunately the person in the photo has not (at least as of this moment) been hog-tied and left in the alley ... The guy in question, by the way, has a decent libel case, but he can’t sue Facebook, because Congress gave Facebook a free pass to publish malarkey with no consequence.
“The issue here is far, far broader. There’s not just rumors-on-steroids, like this. There’s deliberate fakery, opinions masquerading as facts, AI-generated photos, political gamesmanship, manipulation by foreign adversaries, and financial incentives lined up against the sober gathering of facts.
“How do you know what’s real and what isn’t? Well, that’s complicated. But a starting point is what I’ve been saying a lot lately: If you pay for journalism, then you are the customer, and the publisher is obligated to serve you by doing the kind of journalism I described above. If you’re not paying, then you are not the customer. You are the product. You’re being sold, and the ‘information’ you’re getting is probably about as reliable as the notion that there’s a spider-vampire man in Aggieville dusting highballs with lethal dope.”