Media Technique: Slanting
Senator Target was walking his dog in the
park one morning, when he noticed a young girl had dropped her doll’s necklace.
He hurried over and picked it up. “Excuse me, young lady,” he said, tapping her
on the shoulder, “but I believe this necklace is yours.”
At that moment, the child’s mother looked
over from a nearby park bench and saw the expression of fear and uncertainty on
her daughter’s face. “Help! Police!” she shouted. “A man is molesting my
child!” A park policeman soon arrived, and in spite of Senator Target’s
protests, arrested the senator.
After a lengthy discussion at the station,
Senator Target was released. However, a reporter assigned to the police blotter
recognized the senator’s name. Soon there was a front-page story in the local
paper, “Senator Target Charged with Child Molestation.” (The paper did run an
“Additional Information” note on page 12 two days later, noting that the
charges had been dropped.)
Picking up on the article in the local press,
the Big City News ran an indignant
editorial that included sentences such as, “Do we have no better people to
represent this great state than rapists and child molesters?” and, “Reliable
sources also tell us that Senator Target offered the four-year-old a jeweled
necklace, apparently in an attempt to seduce the child into who knows what
perverted situation.”
Senator Target issued a press release,
explaining what actually happened. In response, the Big City News and now several other papers in the senator’s state
ran stories with the headline, “Senator Target Claims He Is Not a Child
Molester,” and quoting the child’s mother as saying, “Who knows what would have
happened if the police hadn’t arrived when they did?” The story concluded with
her comment, “I don’t trust that man.”
This comment spurred another, growing round
of editorials, in which indignant editors sneered, “Who, indeed, can trust
Senator Target, when he so willingly violates a child’s safe space by unlawfully
touching her? Indeed, where is the law here?”
A new round of editorials soon emerged,
calling for the State Attorney General to take charge of a criminal
investigation and to uncover any collusion, bribery, or other prosecutable
practices that might have resulted in the charges being dropped by the park
police.
Hundreds of postings to social media echoed
and further distorted and amplified the “facts” that were being “suppressed” by
the newspapers. The papers occasionally noted that the new “facts” were
unproven, as in, “An as yet unconfirmed report says that virtually all of the
park police on duty that morning are members of Senator Target’s Federist
political party. So no matter what the senator really did—which remains unclear—the
police were likely willing to look the other way. That’s all the more reason
for the Attorney General to get involved as soon as possible, to remedy this
gross miscarriage of justice.”
At one point, it was discovered that Senator
Target had attended a park fundraiser just three weeks before the incident with
the little girl in the park, and that he had donated $400 for “park
improvements.” The Big City News was
all over it. “While, this donation could probably not technically be considered
a bribe,” one of the paper’s editorials noted, “it certainly does smack of a
quid-pro-quo inducement, not dissimilar to the protection money that crooked
small town cops used to extort from helpless shopkeepers.” The donation was
held up as an act of “questionable ethics” and “shockingly tone deaf decision
making.”
When it came time for Senator Target to run
for re-election, his opponent put up billboards and sent out flyers all over
the state. Underneath a photo of the candidate embracing his wife, kids, and
dog was printed, “Vote for Joe Doax for senate. He’s not a child molester.”
His political career over, Senator Target
retired to a small cabin on a small lake, in a small village in another state.
Years later, two men who had worked at the Big City News when the scandal was hot
were reminiscing on it. “You know,” said one, “what happened to Senator Target
was almost unfair. Still, I guess, we did get rid of him.”
“Not only that,” said the other, “but we sold
a lot of papers.”
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