#PMARSHONAU: The unbridled power of social media hits hard.
I have read and heard that new Auburn football coach Hugh Freeze harassed a sexual assault victim with direct messages on Twitter. Didn’t happen. The messages are easily available now. They are in response to the woman’s strong criticism on Twitter of Freeze and Liberty athletics director Ian McCaw. They include nothing out of line, nothing even bordering on harassment.
I have read and heard, even from reputable reporters, that Freeze gave up his Twitter account as a condition of employment at Auburn. Nope. That didn’t happen either. Freeze quickly denied it at his introductory press conference Monday with athletics director John Cohen sitting a few feet from him.
I have read and heard that Cohen left Mississippi State for Auburn just ahead of being pushed out. Sorry. That one didn’t happen either. Folks in the know at Mississippi State laugh at the notion.
I have read and heard that boosters and trustees forced Cohen to hire Freeze. Not true. Those people were calling others trying to find out what was going on. They were not involved in the search or the decision, Saying they were fits the popular narrative among some Auburn people that see a mean booster hiding behind every bush. It just isn’t true.
I have read and heard that Freeze personally cheated to get players to Ole Miss. I wasn’t there, but I can say that the NCAA found no evidence that he participated or knew it was happening. Thus, he did not receive a show-cause penalty.
Does anyone care that UCLA coach Chip Kelly left Oregon for the NFL with an 18-month show cause? Ever hear anybody say it meant he was a cheater who should not be hired? Didn’t think so.
I am mystified that the now public tweet/direct message exchange has seemingly been the main reason given for the outrage expressed by many and still being expressed by some. It’s OK to say Freeze would have been well-advised to not do it. But a reason to not hire him or proof that he can’t be trusted? That doesn’t even make sense.
But this isn’t all about whether Freeze was a good hire – I believe he was – or whether he should not have been hired. It’s about the unbridled power of the Internet in general, and social media in particular.
In the wide, wide world of social media, nameless and faceless people can make up stories, maybe with a kernel of truth and maybe with no truth at all. Those stories can soon come to be accepted as fact and even find their way into news stories. And that is a truly sad development for a business, truly a way of life, that has made it possible for me to make a living and take care of my family for more than half a century. And I fear it’s only going to get worse. I will be long gone, but I can’t imagine what it will be like 10-20 years from now.
I so fondly remember when reporters and their stories were consistently challenged by cranky editors who did not care if they hurt your feelings, when widely held journalistic standards were required to be honored, when second- and third-hand sources weren’t sources at all, when using the English language properly and using proper grammar was not just expected but demanded, when getting the story first was important but not as important as getting it right, when the circulation and advertising departments of the newspaper and the news-gathering part of the newspaper were separate entities, when there were no clicks to count (I don’t count them now), when quality mattered more than quantity, when openly cheering in public for a team you covered would get you fired, when writers’ opinions were confined to columns and to the editorial page, never to show up in news stories.
In the 38 years I spent in the newspaper business, I was not once asked to write a story to “sell newspapers.” Today it’s different almost everywhere. Clicks often matter more than quality and sometimes even more than accuracy.
Believe me, we all make mistakes. I have made my share, and every one of them has made me sick to my stomach. They still do. One of the benefits of working online is that, once alerted to mistakes, a reporter can repair them. In the newspaper days, there was not a thing to be done about it until the next paper came out 24 hours later. At least that was true most of the time.
When I was the sports editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, we produced an annual football section. I don’t remember the season, but we had a color drawing of an Auburn player and a drawing of an Alabama player on the cover. The section was printed in the wee hours of the morning, after the newspaper was printed. The publisher, a great and memorable newspaper man named Doyle Harvill, went to the pressroom to get a copy. I wasn’t there, but I heard what happened next.
Harvill immediately noticed that the Alabama player on the cover was blue and the Auburn player was red. He cut loose with a string of his favorite words, slung the copy he was holding to the floor and told the pressroom foreman to throw them all away and reprint it. That took away much of the profit margin from the ads in the section. He didn’t care. It had to be right.
There is little of that kind of thinking these days. And we are all worse off for it.
-Philip Marshall
