Columnist Jon Ralston: Garbage floats in cyberspace

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 5:29 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

Almost 16 years later, it remains my worst moment in journalism.

During a radio debate with a marquee Democrat, a prominent Republican official had accused a well-known elected official of being unfaithful to his wife. He had no evidence, but he was one of the state's highest GOP officials. So was it news that such a man would make such accusations over the public airwaves?

I didn't want to write the story. But after much soul-searching and agonizing, after consulting with editors, I decided I must. I'm still not sure to this day that I made the right call. But I squirmed as I interviewed the targeted Democrat and I was repelled by the subject matter as I tapped my keyboard. It was the one time I wish I didn't have a byline.

Back then, though, the Internet was just an idea and, it seemed, some journalistic standards existed. But in the wake of recent cyber-postings about a presidential contender seamlessly working their way into the mainstream media -- sorry, folks, I don't mean to tease but you will not see them repeated in this space -- what is most disturbing is not just that the phrase "journalistic standards" has become an oxymoron but that, to twist B.B. King's lyrics, the agony is gone.

I watched in horror last week as a couple of prattling fools on one of the local TV stations cackled about rumors they had not even tried to confirm about a presidential candidate. But it had been posted on the Internet, so they felt free to talk about it, without any regard to whether it was true and, more importantly, without any thought to the damage it might cause.

It remains etched in my memory, as vivid today as it was in 1988, the pain it caused my victim's wife when the story was published. I was mortified when she called me aside at a public event and dressed me down. I was ashamed, crestfallen, crushed.

And yet shame seems to have taken a holiday from the media when it comes to covering politics as any crackpot with a computer and an Internet connection can disgorge all manner of sick stuff -- it doesn't have to be true and may even be libelous -- and too often a compliant, slothful major outlet will scoop it up.

Cyberspace has become akin to an open-air bazaar, where the most loathsome garbage is packaged in such a way that less-than-selective buyers from major papers and TV stations grab it, repackage it and broadcast it to a broader readership or viewership. It is not caveat emptor; it's sex and sleaze sells, so bring it on.

I hold myself up as no paragon of journalism -- I have made mistakes and surely will again. But experience has been an impeccable teacher and compared to too many of my colleagues, who prefer titillation to investigation, my record will withstand scrutiny.

But has the political discourse been so coarsened, have media organizations become so shallow that they will act not as a pack of jackals in a feeding frenzy -- that metaphor has become too mild -- but as gang rapists ready to let their basest impulses rule the day? They don't have to be first, so long as they get their turn.

The process itself is insidious. Rumor is floated on the Internet. So a news organization will either attribute it to a source it cannot verify or, in a slicker trick, a reporter will ask a pol about it and thus have a story: "So and so refused to comment on Internet reports that ..." Pretty soon, the subject of the rumor has no choice to respond after the welter of media attention -- although I wish many more would say, "It's none of your business, Fourth Estate Peeping Toms."

That sound you hear is of real journalists, as opposed to prostrate conduits, turning in their graves as a long legacy of American journalism, once lofty and noble, is now all but indistinguishable from the tabloids. The media wonder why the public is so repulsed by politics, why so few good people will run for office. And voters wail about such sensationalism, but lap it up.

Locally, there are at least two serial e-mailers who routinely put out stuff that is either patently false or impossible to confirm. And quite often, their crap is printed by the mainstream media without any legwork.

Yes, of course they will turn out to be right once in awhile. But so what? Is it worth the carnage caused when their errors are repeated, when that bell cannot be told to toll no more? I understand, as well as anyone, the imperative to be first. But at what cost?

That story I wrote 16 years ago caused minimal damage to the politician involved and the story, while repeated by other media outlets, disappeared almost immediately. For that, I have always been thankful. Unlike others, I would have been sick if it had destroyed the man's candidacy.

Now, I fear, there wouldn't be any hesitation to repeat the charges, a website would be erected and we would be bombarded by a constant e-mail barrage. And what I know is that too many people who are reading this right now will be more curious about the names I have not named than in the issues of disappearing standards and devolving dialogue raised herein.