A Japanese journalist I know is covering the Olympics, and every two or three days he e-mails a “Hotlanta” report to his American friends.
Until a few days ago, his messages were whimsical thoughts on such topics as Atlanta’s humidity (reminiscent of summer in Tokyo), Olympic women’s judo (the Japanese are crazy about it) and the food in his press room (cheap sushi and instant noodles in plastic bowls).
In one Hotlanta report he even pondered the Olympic moon:
“I saw the full moon this evening between two skyscrapers in Atlanta. It was really beautiful. People in Japan used to believe, up to the Apollo 11, probably, that a rabbit resides on the moon.”
Then a bomb blew up in Centennial Olympic Park. The FBI muscled in on a security guard named Richard Jewell, and the media elbowed in right behind. The warm glow of Olympic coverage sharpened into a glare.
My friend’s Hotlanta report changed, too, his whimsy replaced by puzzlement as he watched the American media at work.
“After the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that a security guard is the `focus’ of federal investigations with respect to the bomb explosion,” he wrote, “many media have followed suit, with reporting his real name and his background.
“Unfortunately, today is a kind of slow day in terms of sports events. So, the `possible suspect’ was a good target of world’s journalists.
“We have NO IDEA if he is really responsible for the explosion.”
He went on to say that in Japan, major news organizations make it a rule not to report a suspect’s name without strong evidence.
“I’m afraid,” he concluded, “if he turns out to be innocent, how those media, which carelessly or bravely reported his name, would compensate his and his family’s lost reputation.”
You don’t have to be Japanese to wonder the same thing, but as Americans we’ve grown accustomed to this kind of premature public hunt and slaughter.
Remember Brown’s Chicken & Pasta restaurant in Palatine, where in 1993 a gunman shot seven people dead? The police arrested a 23-year-old Elgin man. They scoured his home and his cars. The media staked out his father’s house and combed his neighborhood. He was a party boy transformed in the media into a psychopath.
And then?
Whoops. Wrong guy.
Or how about the pipe bomber who in 1989 killed a federal judge and a civil rights lawyer in the South? The FBI and reporters from around the world invaded Enterprise, Ala., a town whose only prior claim to fame was its monument to the boll weevil. They searched the home and store of a junk dealer. They pumped out his septic tanks. They did all of it on the network news and the front pages of virtually every major paper in America.
And then?
Whoops. Wrong guy.
It’s understandable that the police suspect and even arrest people who turn out to be innocent. What’s unforgivable is the speed and ease with which mere suspects are marched publicly to the guillotine.
We in the media, of course, summon the headless horse defense.
We’re just hapless riders strapped onto the mindless beast. We can’t control it and we can’t get off. Once we know someone might be, just may be, perhaps is or could be a potential suspect, we have no choice but to report the news because . . .
Because, well. Because when everybody’s doing it, everybody else has to do it. If there’s a problem, it’s with the loose lips that leaked the tips.
The public goads the media in this pursuit. People want instant answers to the puzzle, quick cures for their fears. And we’re less concerned than the Japanese with reputation–at least when it’s someone else’s.
As a society, we’re hungry for the two-page detective novel. Give us a crime in the morning, the villain’s name and shirt size by dinnertime.
If Richard Jewell is the Olympic bomber, the pain of the publicity will just be part of his punishment. But if he’s not? Whoops.
Still, we’ll bleat our worries and beat our breasts and do it the same way next time.
It’s as nutty as that rabbit on the moon.
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e-mail: mtschmich@aol.com
