Editor's Notebook: The Media is a Harsh Mistress

Last week, for the first time in my collegiate career, The Crimson was made the bearer of bad news about fellow students. It is now clear why many people avoid the news: it’s depressing.

Before this week, The Crimson was the happy campus newspaper, reporting on professor tenures, the presidential search and student group activities. If news happened, The Crimson reported it, and Harvard seems to be a pretty happy campus. Very rarely were individual student names mentioned in anything other than a positive light; any negative charges brought up against individuals were always random Harvard affiliates, no one I would know personally.

But last week, things changed. Two days in a row, I sat down with my morning paper to read on the front page about serious charges leveled against students I know personally. Two days in a row, the Harvard social gossip wheel started spinning long before lunchtime with details of transgressions, details few gossipers were clear on but many were fabricating, details in which the rumormongers seem to take something of a voyeuristic guilty pleasure. It makes my stomach turn.

But news consists of events. Reporters report on what’s happening in the world, essentially any incident of interest that crops up. At times, this can be problematic, as the information behind the events can get lost in the process. Just look at the 1993-4 health care debate, when the media reported on the size of Clinton’s 1,342-page plan and the minute-by-minute Congressional skirmishes without reporting much on the plan itself. Within a year, the public was disillusioned and confused with meaningless rhetoric, and the Plan Nobody Understood went down in a flames. (Of course, the media reported on the smoke.)

Still, you can’t have a newspaper without news; serious matters such as these are as worthy of reporting as lighter ones. But publicity inevitably places everything in an unsympathetic light. Seeing fellow students suffer highlights that whether an individual actually did something wrong is not always paramount in the eyes of the media (and the subsequent gossip network). The news generally consists solely of events, e.g., being charged with a crime and the events following that charge. And unfortunately, with the exception of the O.J. Simpson case, an accusal is always a larger news event than an acquittal.

That the media is a harsh mistress is taken for granted in the real world: When presented with a picture of Bill Clinton, many people think of cigars, not healthcare. But very rarely does the media mention the names of non-public figures, particularly young people, in a non-positive light. This, of course, makes a negative reference all the more noticeable. There’s something saddening imbedded in the tarnishing of a young name. It’s strange when bad news has a face, and a nice friendly face at that; a face that I now have trouble associating with anything other than a headline.

Generally, severe errors in judgment are prerequisite to finding oneself negatively portrayed on the front page. But I sympathize with my fellow students. Obviously neither student would have wanted their front-page appearances; both are visibly in over their heads. Two students’ lives are somewhat ruined at the moment, and it’s painful to watch.

Consequences are steep once the media gets involved, as issues that once involved one or two people now involve many hundreds, and the aftermath is suddenly considered “news.” Reputations shatter in four-word headlines, and once broken, a name can never be fully repaired. And yet every day entire lives get staged from headline to headline. Sometimes that performance is saddening for everyone involved.

—Arianne R. Cohen