{"id":10847,"date":"2017-12-20T11:11:20","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T19:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10847"},"modified":"2017-12-20T11:11:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T19:11:20","slug":"the-internet-executioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-internet-executioner\/","title":{"rendered":"The Internet Executioner"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by <\/span>Victor Davis Hanson<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
Defining Ideas<\/em>
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Image credit:\u00a0Barbara Kelley<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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In the pre-Internet age, newspaper and television reporters would need clearance from their nosy managing editors to investigate a breaking scandal or firing. Additional journalists then would go to work uncovering facts and details. There were, to be sure, feeding frenzies and misinformation in the zeal to get a scoop or ensure an exclusive story. But the pursuit of a scandal was braked by both professional fears about the consequences of shoddy or biased reporting, and the absence of instantaneous electronic messaging and posting.<\/p>\n

Suggestions of wrongdoing would be digested, debated, and disseminated for days or weeks within a larger cycle of warring op-ed columns and radio and television debate and commentary. In this often deliberate process, federal or local district attorneys and\/or a grand jury, then, could monitor the public story, while conducting preliminary investigations to determine whether a criminal indictment was necessary. A court trial might follow.<\/p>\n

Not now. The Internet and social media have either compressed\u2014or pruned away entirely\u2014such adjudication, which once ensured to the accused some presumption of innocence and constitutional due process. Well-meant and needed efforts\u2014from calling to account sexual harassers to stopping Russian interference in U.S. politics to questioning the commemoration of Confederate-era racist slave-holders\u2014can accelerate quickly out of control to the point where rumor, innuendo, or frenzy replace reason, fact, and fair adjudication. How ironic\u2014or rather predictable\u2014it is that the more rapid the transmission of a story, the more likely it is to be inaccurate or untrue.<\/p>\n

Almost daily, another public figure is accused of sexual assault or harassment\u2014Dustin Hoffman, Tavis Smiley, Larry King, Ryan Lizza, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer\u2026 The list goes on. The charges can go back decades, or at least precede the current statute of limitations, and often we lump together the accusers without much regard for the individual nature of the charges lodged against unique individuals.<\/p>\n

Outrage can instantly give way to the outrageous. New York Times journalist Glenn Thrush condemned the predations of fellow journalist Mark Halperin\u2014until he was likewise called out as a harasser a few days later. Actor Richard Dreyfuss grew furious after learning about Kevin Spacey\u2019s groping of his son\u2014and then old accusers stepped forward to make similar charges from his own distant past. Omar Ashmawy, staff director and chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics, was revealed to be under investigation for verbally abusing and physically assaulting women, the sort of allegations he is supposed to be probing.<\/p>\n

The victims of harassment and assault\u2014many justifiably infuriated by efforts to suppress their voices and stories\u2014have come forward because they feel safe and secure, in part thanks to the sheer number of cases that appear in the news. The targets of their allegations are usually marquee journalists, movie or television celebrities, or prominent politicians or officials, and thus bound to garner attention of the sort felt necessary to change the larger cultural landscape.<\/p>\n

The allegations often are not subject to either criminal or civil legal action and can appear first on a blog or Web site. In seconds, the details are flashed to millions on social media. In reaction, current and past employers issue condemnatory comments\u2014sometimes announcing firings despite only preliminary investigations (or none at all). In some cases, we see a return of the ancient Roman custom of damnatio memoriae<\/em>\u2014the erasing of all evidence of a prior public existence. Radio personality and author Garrison Keillor\u2019s show was not just yanked from the menu of Minnesota public radio, but so were all rebroadcasts of his prior Prairie Home Companion offerings. Yet we still do not know the full details of Keillor\u2019s alleged sexual transgressions. Keillor certainly has said a variety of offensive things in years past and his recent responses seemed at times incoherent. But at 75 years of age, Keillor\u2019s career of a half-century ended within minutes, without much information given to the public about the exact charges or his defense.<\/p>\n

No one as yet has offered any workable guide to the electronic hangman. How do we calibrate, much less settle, social media-fed allegations of criminal activity? Of course, we should distinguish gutter talk and groping from exposure and coerced sexual intercourse\u2014but what about the bad behavior that lies in between? Do we separate recent allegations from those well beyond the legal statute of limitations\u2014or arbitrarily establish an actionable reach back to 20, 30, or 40 years?<\/p>\n

To establish guilt, do we demand more than one or two witnesses, as well as three or four\u2014or more\u2014accusers? Do we weigh whether the accused has apologized for the act, denied it completely, or sort of apologized, by claiming that some\u2014but not most\u2014of the allegations were true? Do private payouts and public apologies carry the weight of court convictions\u2014or does it just depend? Do changing cultural norms over a half-century warrant consideration?<\/p>\n

Do we balance the accused\u2019s talent and good deeds against his mistreatment of women? Long ago, the media (and law enforcement) decided that Ted Kennedy\u2019s lethal negligence was offset by his liberal politics\u2014and that allegations against Martin Luther King, Jr. could be forgiven because he was a civil rights legend who endured unimaginable hatred and pressures. Where do we stand on those cases today? Did the late Roger Ailes die a television pioneer or a rank sexual harasser? Does Monica Lewinsky represent a different sort of Bill Clinton transgression than a Juanita Broderick or Paula Jones?<\/p>\n

Similarly thorny questions arise when considering the Russia scandal. In the last weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, the Internet buzzed with rumors of Trump\u2019s \u201ccollusion\u201d with Russia to subvert a sure Hillary Clinton victory. Blogs, Web sites, and podcasts made easy accusations that seemed to fit with Trump\u2019s image of a wheeler-dealer, real-estate developer and reality TV star who lacked political and military experience.<\/p>\n

After the improbable Trump victory, the sensationalism online only grew\u2014as if the Kremlin, not a lackluster campaign, had cost Clinton the election. Soon a special counsel, Robert Mueller, with a legal team of \u201call stars\u201d and \u201cprofessionals\u201d was greeted with glee, as if indicting, convicting, and impeaching Donald Trump was a certainty in our age of leaks and fake news.<\/p>\n

Few in the thumbs-up\/thumbs-down Internet arena of rumor and innuendo asked whether the charges were based on solid evidence, or whether Mueller\u2019s much heralded investigatory team was geographically, ideologically, and politically diverse and disinterested. Now, after months of meted-out Internet justice, it appears that the electronic mob rushed to judgment.<\/p>\n

Ironically, it may be more likely that the proverbial police themselves needed policing now that congressional investigations, subpoenas, and hearings have shed light on a growing number of conflict of interest disclosures among Mueller\u2019s legal team. The fountainhead of the Russian collusion frenzy, the so-called Steele Fusion\/\/GPS dossier, may not only be a concocted fraud, but may also have served as the basis for obtaining FISA grants for surveillance sweeps that resulted in the unmasking and leaking of the names of American citizens to the public.<\/p>\n

No matter. The electronic judge and jury have already moved on from the serious charge of \u201ccollusion,\u201d the original reason why a special counsel was appointed, to a quite different accusation of \u201cobstruction.\u201d Soon \u201cobstruction\u201d may be superseded by some new Internet-fueled allegation that will be promulgated and adjudicated in mere seconds.<\/p>\n

The recent statue-removal craze is similar, although the frenzy turns against the dead rather than the living.<\/p>\n

To the degree Americans pay much attention to the statues in their midst, they mostly ignore that the monuments were erected by prior generations for reasons with which they are now mostly unfamiliar or unconcerned. Yet within a few hours, it seemed, the Civil War was being refought over mute stones and bronzes. Confederate statues, once suddenly rediscovered, were torn down, defaced, or removed to storage\u2014rarely on a majority vote of a local legislative body or plebiscite, but often in the dead of night to preclude mass demonstrations and counter-protests.<\/p>\n

No one seemed to know\u2014or care\u2014whether all Confederate grandees were equally responsible for slavery: Was Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, as bad, or half as bad, as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Gen. James Longstreet, or Stonewall Jackson? Instead, what apparently mattered in the national hysteria was that the representations of those who fought for a bad cause no longer deserved any public commemorations. As was true of the start of all iconoclastic movements\u2014from those of the Romans and seventh-century Byzantine Church to the French Revolution\u2014a certain madness swept the country, but now uniquely energized by Internet reporting and blogging. Then suddenly, this electronic frenzy ended in exhaustion as quickly as it had started, replaced by the sexual assault and the take-a-knee NFL player scandals.<\/p>\n

Neither fads nor frenzies are novel, especially in participatory democracies and republics. Think of 19th-century s\u00e9ances and phrenology to 20th-century hula-hoops and pet rocks. Collective outrage can arise when there are no real offenders (the Salem Witch trials), some culprits (the Red Scare of the 1950s), or plenty of genuinely culpable predators (the recent spate of celebrity sexual harassment accusations).<\/p>\n

In our contemporary popular arena of electronic sensationalism, journalistic standards have suffered. All sources are equal. \u201cTrending\u201d means that a story, at least in its infancy, is crowding out its competitors by its juiciness, not necessarily its meticulous fact-checking. To suspend judgement until more evidence is known, to double- or triple-check a source, to cross-examine a witness\u2014this is all to lose precious seconds of electronic time or to let off a suspect deemed already guilty. Audit is defined by what 51 percent of readers click on at any moment.<\/p>\n

Journalism schools have recalibrated ethics and professional standards largely through the lenses of race, class, and gender considerations, rather than traditional professional codes of conduct or an education in moral sensibility. That may explain the current epidemic of fake news and plagiarism that sweeps the Internet. There are few repercussions for falsifying the news, inventing sources, or using foul language.<\/p>\n

The Internet and social media have helped to democratize knowledge, give us more information for rational decision-making, and connect diverse people. But instant electronic communications are also fueling our worse human impulses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas Image credit:\u00a0Barbara Kelley   In the pre-Internet age, newspaper and television reporters would need clearance from their nosy managing editors to investigate a breaking scandal or firing. Additional journalists then would go to work uncovering facts and details. There were, to be sure, feeding frenzies and misinformation in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1143,1141,1124,1104,1091,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2OX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11811,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/uncommon-knowledge-victor-davis-hanson-on-the-case-for-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":10847,"position":0},"title":"Uncommon Knowledge Victor Davis Hanson on \u201cThe Case for Trump\u201d","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 6, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"How did blue-collar voters connect with a millionaire from Queens in the 2016 election? Martin and Illie Anderson Senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson addresses that question and more in his newly released book,\u00a0The Case for Trump. He sits down with Peter Robinson to chat about his motivation to write a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Case for Trump"","block_context":{"text":"The Case for Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-case-for-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10516,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-fire-and-fury-of-presidents\/","url_meta":{"origin":10847,"position":1},"title":"The Fire And Fury Of Presidents","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Defining Ideas \u00a0 Image credit:Barbara Kelley \u201cWe could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals.\" \u2014Barack Obama, April 2016 The media recently went ballistic over President Trump\u2019s impromptu promises of \u201cfire and fury\u201d in reply to the latest North Korean threats\u2014and even more so when\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media"","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12598,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-the-cowards-of-cancel-culture\/","url_meta":{"origin":10847,"position":2},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson: The cowards of ‘cancel culture’","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 1, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ The Hill Each generation deals with its own manifestations of age-old mob frenzies, bullying and public shaming. Salem, Mass., had its witch trials in the 1690s. The 1950s endured its McCarthyism. And we now are enduring our \u201ccancel culture.\u201d\u00a0 But 21st-century public shaming reaches not thousands\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13199,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bidens-domestic-doctrine\/","url_meta":{"origin":10847,"position":3},"title":"Biden’s Domestic Doctrine","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Internet Interview with Urs Gehriger While the American media swoon over President Joe Biden, historian Victor Davis Hanson is ringing the alarm bell. He warns that the radical Left has captured the White House and is on the march. 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