"Depraved disregard"?

At the risk of looking like a simpleton, I'd like to pose a simple question:

What is a rumor?

Is there a difference between a rumor and a lie, or does a lie become "laundered" into a rumor when it is repeated by someone other than the original liar? For example, if I state that I served in the Vietnam War (something I never did), and that I saw Marines skin a Vietcong suspect alive in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan, that is precisely the sort of thing we could expect to be repeated, especially by people who wanted to believe it. For some reason, the repetition of it has the effect of lessening the lie, even though there's no logical reason why it should. My lie about Vietnam remains a lie no matter how many thousands of times it might be repeated or believed. Yet we call it a rumor, and those who repeat it are not said to be liars, nor are they liars. That is because it cannot be a lie to merely repeat what someone else told you. (Unless, of course, you know it is a lie....)

Considering that lies can be so easily transformed into rumors and then spread like computer viruses (Internet hoaxes telling people to delete program applications are close to being just that), it would seem to me that those entrusted with delivering the truth to the public would have a greater duty of care to ensure that they do not become agents of transmission. It is doubly important, therefore, that when those entrusted to transmit the truth discover that they have transmitted lies, that they acknowledge their error.

If there is one thing I can't stand, it's the idea that I might help spread such hoaxes. Unfortunately, when I linked to Brian Thevenot's story, I did just that. I spread someone's lie, which Thevenot had apparently failed to check.

Unlike me, Thevenot was right there, talking to the Guardsmen about the dead bodies stacked inside the freezer. Apparently, he never bothered to look inside. I'm cynical, but something about Thevenot's proximity to the freezer prevented my cynicism from suspecting a lie.

On the other hand, my familiarity with alligators immediately made me highly suspicious of the Charmaine Neville tale (widely repeated -- by Daily Kos, CounterPunch, and Editor and Publisher). Still, I had no reason to doubt the central point of her story, which that she'd behaved heroically by commandeering a flatboat, then breaking into a bus and driving countless people to safety.

I now see an admission by the editor of Editor and Publisher that Neville never drove the bus:

In an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News Channel, A Current Affair correspondent Arthel Neville, of the famous musical family, said she had heard that a man was beaten to death by an angry mob in the Dome after he raped and killed a 7-year-old.

Another Neville, blues singer Charmaine, 49, told a story resembling a made-for-TV movie that was broadcast as news on Baton Rouge television. The distraught singer spoke of smashing through a roof with a crowbar to rescue victims, getting raped, watching alligators eat people, and walking through "hundreds of dead bodies" before pushing two legless women in wheelchairs to dry land in the French Quarter and commandeering a bus to drive people to safety.

All the while, troops in helicopters airlifted others to safety and ignored her, and the National Guard refused to help, she said.

The TV station's report was linked by the widely read liberal blog Daily Kos. Greg Mitchell, editor of the trade publication Editor & Publisher, wrote an admiring column about it headlined "Horror and Heroism." Asked whether he believed Charmaine Neville's story, Mitchell replied that Neville later said she didn't drive the bus but was on it. He wouldn't comment further. (Emphasis added.)

Is Mitchell's remark a retraction? Then why doesn't his story make any mention of it? Instead, Editor and Publisher still features the same story, same headline ("Charmaine Neville's New Orleans Story: Horror and Heroism") and same misleading text:
(September 07, 2005) -- Every time you think you've heard it all about the horrors of New Orleans in the past week, something like Charmaine Neville's experience comes around the bend, or the blog, and smacks you over the head like a club. It's a story of dead babies in the water, alligators eating people, heroism (she commandeered a bus to save dozens) and despair (she was raped).

Yes, she is a singer and one of the famous Nevilles. Her father, Charles Neville, performs with uncles Aaron, Art and Cyril in the Neville Brothers band. The Boston Globe has declared that there are "simply no limits to her skills," and The New York Times said she "electrifies audiences." As a frequent visitor to New Orleans, and a JazzFest attendee, I know the Nevilles’ work well. But that connection matters little when you consider her story.

It is just one more tale -- although surely one of the most horrific -- that everyone ought to ponder in considering exactly which officials and agencies failed in their rescue and relief responsibilities, from the top down, in a depraved disregard for life.

I agree that it's a tale everyone ought to ponder, but not just in thinking about the depraved disregard for life.

I'm wondering whether there might also be a depraved disregard for facts, and whether this depraved disregard might play a role in the initial creation of fiction by attention seekers. Who knows, it might also play a role in a sort of cycle of transformation -- of lies into rumors, of rumors into "facts."


AFTERTHOUGHT: Is it mean-spirited to call a lie a lie? Or does that depend on who told the lie? I mean, surely it wouldn't be mean-spirited to say Bush lied, would it?

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, Gateway Pundit has a nice collection of Katrina lies folklore.

MORE: I've written previously about the somewhat related issue of whether lies can become true with age (especially when they serve the interests of those promoting them).

posted by Eric on 09.28.05 at 08:46 AM





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