The Ritual of Piling On

David Brooks calls it the “colisseum culture” in Tuesday’s New York Times(February 10, 2015). He describes it this way:

Some famous person does something wrong. The Internet, the most impersonal of mediums, erupts with contempt and mockery. The offender issues a paltry half-apology, which only inflames the public more. The pounding cry for resignation builds until capitulation comes. Public passion is spent and the spotlight moves on

Brooks relates this process to the public stoning of Brian Williams, who has confessed to mis-reporting a story while covering the fighting in Iraq several years ago. Brooks calls for a more generous response to public figures, a process he calls “rigorous forgiveness.”

The first issue, however, is the reflexive “piling on” that denizens of the Internet take delight in. In football this behavior is penalized after a ball carrier is down on the ground, unable to advance. If a defender jumps on top of the tackler who has neutralized the runner, the team is penalized for “piling on”

There are no such penalties on the Internet. A fallen celebrity is fair game. I suggested before the Super Bowl that Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots were victims of “piling on” over the “Deflategate” scandal. There were a few days in desperate need of a story leading up to the Super Bowl, and the suspicion of someone tampering with footballs in the previous AFC Conference Playoff served the purpose admirably.

Social Media and Journalism abhor a day of no stories. Like a noxious gas a story expands to fill the space accorded it. There is nothing like celebrity malfeasance to occupy the lull before the next news day, because many of us hanker to put them in their place.

In the case of Bill Belichick, he has outfoxed too many teams in critical games, depriving them of victories they felt entitled to. He has the public persona of a toad and rarely favors the media with a good quote. Now they have to endure another year with Belichick in the limelight. But before this they had a chance to bring him down. Maybe they still will, but the story about inflation of footballs would not have the legs it did if anyone but Belichick had been the protagonist, and if it had not come in the two days before Super Bowl Media Day.

As for Brian Williams, we heard a lot of chatter about his dabbling in the entertainment world and his aspirations to be the next Jay Leno. Williams was very comfortable as a guest on night-time variety shows and flashed surprising humor and wit in the give-and-take. Not much chance to display those skills on NBC Nightly News.

Perhaps some resent the celebrity status of a news anchor, who is supposed to project the voice-of-truth in news media. Whatever the motive, the man’s entire news journalism career was carefully scrutinized and any suspicious irregularities broadcast as potential evidence of a pattern of behavior. You have to wonder if any of us could live up to that kind of scrutiny.

If there hadn’t been such a piling on frenzy in the week following Williams’ confession of misrepresenting his vulnerability in Iraq he might have returned to his job following a thorough investigation. There is no minimizing the breech of trust for a news anchor, and perhaps it was just an example of the unforgivable sin.

The phenomenon of “piling on” makes it hard to be fallible in the public media. It evokes Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” in which every citizen seizes a stone for a public massacre that appears as inevitable as it is barbaric. If your number comes up you have to die in that fable of mindless tradition. As teenagers we read that story with skeptical horror. Now we see it played out in the monthly news cycle.

Whose number will be next?

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