The Age of Instant Infamy

I am sure that everyone reading this knows of the incident of a London woman being pushed by a jogger into the path of an oncoming bus on Putney Bridge. When I first read this story in the mainstream media, it made a little alarm bell go off in my mind. I thought this was just the sort of incident that the news media would blow up well beyond its local significance and something that was likely to provoke a disproportionate reaction from the hypersensitive British police. Sure enough, I was right on both of these counts.

The media immediately labelled it 'jogger rage', likening it to the conflicts between drivers that often escalate into violence, despite having no evidence that it was the result of a conflict between the individuals concerned. When I viewed the video of the incident (and it was no surprise to learn that there was video of it in a country that has more surveillance cameras than any other in the world), I thought the encounter appeared to be an unfortunate accident.

The Metropolitan Police mounted a hunt for the alleged offender and encouraged the public to come forward with information. They soon had their man - or so they thought. He couldn't have made a better villain if the story had been script-written - a wealthy American investment banker whom everyone could imagine was the sort of selfish and callous individual who would commit such a heinous act. The only problem was that they were wrong - the man they had arrested wasn't even in the country at the time of the incident.

Imagine if you had been that man. Your name is published all around the world and for 48 hours you become one of the most despised people on Earth. He was lucky he had a rock solid alibi because it was definitely a case of guilty until proven innocent. The incident reminds me of the case of the American executive who tweeted a nonsensical, supposedly racist remark about getting AIDS on a forthcoming trip to Africa. She found upon her arrival in South Africa that while in the air she had become a social media pariah and that her employer had bowed to pressure and fired her. You could at least argue in that case the woman had done something wrong, although there is no way it justified the international witch hunt that ensued.

The mainstream media are often to blame for fanning these bushfires of public opinion. They do not control what people say on social media but they often take a holier-than-thou moralist viewpoint that gives legitimacy to the excesses of social media commentary, rather than urging caution. Social media has turned the world into a village, a virtual equivalent of the Salem of The Crucible, and the mainstream media have assumed the role of the village elders who are only too willing to find some witches to burn at the stake of popular opinion. 

We live in an age of instant infamy, when accusation is assumed to be guilt, and we should all shudder to think that we could be next in line.