Lies, Damn Lies and Excuses

Nothing is more predictable in Jackson than watching for that David Hampton column in The Clarion-Ledger after any major event, endorsement or election. It’s the one in which he tells us why everyone but the Ledger is doing something really, really bad.

This time, on Sunday, Hampton told us to “tone down the rhetoric in politics.” He wants us to “raise the level of our political dialogue.” He bemoans the “nastiest e-mails” he got during election season, in which he read “some of the most outrageous untruths” he can recall. On page 4G, he slams the e-mail gossip chains that we all got and loathed:

“People pass them along with no thought about truth or ethics. Some are outright lies with altered pictures or statements taken out of context. ... Don’t blindly pass it along.”

Funny, I thought, didn’t I just read some of those “outright lies” on page 3G of that section? Sure enough, I flipped back to the “Talkback” section, which Hampton edits, and there was the letter about the Obama endorsement, the one that had just sent chills up my spine. And right there—you can’t make this up—on the exact spot behind Hampton’s words I just quoted, David Crain of Jackson had written about the president-elect:

“OK let’s see: No experience, association with known terrorists at home and abroad, is in favor of killing newborn babies as well as babies still in their mother’s womb, will raise taxes, etc. ... He was raised Muslim and no doubt is sympathetic toward them. He has received tens of millions of dollars in donations from outside the United States.”

That statement is filled with false statements of the kind that showed up in our e-mail boxes during the campaign. Why is that letter printed in The Clarion-Ledger? Why did Hampton allow it in without comment?

Newspapers are ethically (and legally) responsible for the content of our letters to the editor. We can allow a variety of opinions, such as criticism of a new president, but it is abuse of our First Amendment rights, at best, to allow our publications to be used to spread outright factual fabrications.

These are the kind of journalistic decisions that can spur a fool to commit violence, or get another fool elected to an office he doesn’t deserve. Hampton should know better. Perhaps he was out taking drunk pics the night before?

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