On Tuesday morning I was surprised to see a story in THE GLOBE AND MAIL, THE TORONTO SUN and other local media about Bob Dylan:
A bigger surprise came later that same day as the story vanished from those sites.
Normally these stories lead into a feeding frenzy.
I’m for these stories not appearing at all.
Stories like this in the past wreaked havoc on peoples’ lives. 
William Randolph Hearst said of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, “Roscoe was a friend. I knew he was innocent. But we sold more papers over his story then anything else.”
We saw the feeding frenzy with Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and many (far too many) others. All were condemned by the ignorant.
But in the Toronto media this story was buried the day it appeared.
Have Canadian media undergone a change of heart for the better?
Our legal system says we are innocent until proven guilty. Too many take speculation in the media as proof of guilt.
Have our media suddenly developed a conscience?
As I said, this has never happened before.
THE STAR and THE SUN reported my story.
What they did not report is that the police found no evidence on my computers and hard drives of the files that led them to my door. In fact they found no evidence of peer to peer sharing.
Mind you my name has had a ton of mud thrown on it across the world as a result of their stories.
The thing is, I am not alone.
The media is the greatest slanderer there is.
As a character in NOTHING SACRED (1937) says, “I’ll tell you hat I think of newspapermen. The hand of God, reaching down into the mire, couldn’t elevate one of them to the depths of degradation.”
That is true of many but not all.
Thing is, it is true of far too many.
When the court decides what is true even then we should hesitate as our justice system is all too often (but not always) about not the reality but the appearance.
In book 2 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates and his conversation partner Glaucon wonder what might happen if a truly good, just, loving man should walk among us. Would we even know what to do with him? Would his genuine goodness be too much of a threat to our faux righteousness? They conclude, “The just man, then, as we have pictured him, will be scourged, on tired, and imprisoned, his eyes will be put out, and after enduring every humiliation he will be crucified, and learn at last that in the world as it is we should want not to be, but to seem, just.” Republic 361e—362a.
Socrates states, “In the world as it is we should want not to be, but to seem, just.”
Yes.–Reg Hartt
« The day I got a letter from Mae West inviting me to come up and see her. John A. MacDonald »