While watching a cable news network a few days ago, a lead story about the role that "fake" news articles played in our recent national elections was aired. In this short "spot", one of the cable news guys interviewed a normal looking man who lives in California. Now, what makes this particular man a bit unusual was how he supplemented his income. He wrote what he happily described as "fake" news stories deliberately designed to deceive. He admitted that the "header" to the story was an almost exact replica of the "header" used by a well known and well respected online news network.
He admitted writing a completely false "news" article that slandered and besmirched the reputation of one of the candidates for President of the United States. He claims to have earned about $8,000 for the piece that was seen by over 1.5 million people and passed on by 500,000 of them.
He claims that this might be something he should not have sent out, but took no personal responsibility for his decietful actions.
Don't get him wrong, he was happy to finally talk to someone from a "real" news organization, but wondered aloud why they had not been investigating this kind of behavior before the election was over. No one stepped in to stop him, so he just went along his merry way creating false stories about people and getting financial reward for reeking havoc and openly lying. Gee whiz, he knew it was wrong, but no one knew he was doing it, so he just continued to do it because he got rewarded for behavior he knew was wrong...and, just so you know...it was NOT his fault. No one stopped him; no one called him out, and no seemed to care. In his mind that made it okay for him to act badly. Shame on him.
In the case of this unwise writer, no one died as a result of his bad behavior.
This, unfortunately, is not true of another more tragic event in the news. The deaths of 36 in a fire in a warehouse that was being used in ways inappropriate to its design or purpose.
The owners are recorded crying and wailing in front of TV cameras. The husband cried when he realized his children could be removed from this obviously unsafe household; the wife protested that they did not have the financial means to correct violations that they knew existed, so they just did nothing. One of their illegal tenants blamed gentrification for seeking housing in an unsafe sub-divided building; she had been, in her description "pushed out" of the housing market in two other California cities, and thought it a reasonable idea to join in the "artistic community" that was renting space form the owner who knew people were living in the space under less than ideal situations. They collectively blamed the local police and fire department for not citing their many violations and shutting them down, thus preventing the horrendous loss of life caused by a fire in a space with inadequate means of egress. No one called them on the violations; they knew their were problems; they did nothing to correct the problems; people died as a result. Shame on them.
As a society, what have we devolved into here? No one seems to want to take responsibility for their ill-advised or just plain bad choices. We have all made bad choices. Some were small ones ( I did so love those brown leather boots I bought years ago, but boy, did they hurt my feet); others are much larger with larger implications: the road not taken; the job turned down; the opportunity missed. But one thing remains constant. Owning our errors, our mistakes, our foolish choices will only help us to become stronger and more complete people. If one cannot do this, one is permanently stuck in a state of arrested development that will block personal growth into full and responsible personhood. And shame on us all.
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