www.smdailyjournal.com
A TIME FOR RUMORS: Those of us in the information business — I am old enough to still think of it as the news business — are often dismayed about the new age in which public accusations must automatically become investigations.
I’m thinking of
Tony Lucca, the longtime baseball coach at Cañada College, who was accused, anonymously and without substance, of racism, homophobia, bullying and intimidation. Six months later, the accusations were found groundless and he was reinstated.
The accusations were in the form of an online petition, and that’s the point. We have seen this happen and it demonstrates how social media is undermining our social structure. Anyone can say anything without regard for how damaging and malicious it can be. In the last five years of political campaigns, I have seen, time and again, people start rumors, speculate without any factual basis, and assert suspicions about “real” motivations, hidden interests and secret agendas — all without any basis in fact.
That’s bad enough, but then you can watch a lengthy exchange unspool in which people add comment upon comment and create a vortex of falsehood — all largely anonymously and unencumbered by fact and with the self-satisfied air of someone in the know.
All of which leads us back to Coach Lucca. I’m glad he was cleared. But why did he have to go through this at all? And how do we hold accountable the person who initiated this pain-filled six months?
In any other context in our society, the original accuser would never have been able to engage so openly in such malicious behavior and there would have been consequences for the accuser and the entity that provided a platform.
Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at
marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.
