REAL "Gangs of New York" 1808

On 12 May 2005 22:43:58 GMT, John Goodall

Actually, they fall into a grey area in the United States. Rumor and innuendo can be reported without any facts and still be protected, as long as it is established that is what you are reporting. While that's all well and good, it ignores the fact that American society regularly accepts rumor, innuendo, and supposition as fact. This being the case, the damage is usually done before the falsehoods can be disproven. This is the netherworld that people like Drudge and many bloggers operate in - they never say what they are reporting as fact, they always present a level between them and the person they are speaking of, and then turn to the legal defense of not revealing "confidential sources" when challenged. My analogy was meant to be humorous, yes - but my phrasing was straight out of the Drudge playbook by my saying "Sources close to..." What I was trying to illustrate is that you can say just about anything about anyone as long as you don't report it as fact, but rather rumor. Rumor does more to convict in the public arena than facts generally do. Sometimes the rumors do turn out to be true, and sometimes they don't. That's not really a new phenomena in American media, what is new is the brashness and audacity - the envelope is being pushed every day. This kind of "journalism" dates back to who knows when. One example of how media rumor wrongly convicted a man of a henious crime is the case of Fatty Arbuckle. Even today, 80 years after the "crime" occurred, many people will say that Arbuckle raped Virginia Rappe and she died of blood contagioning because his weight crushed her full bladder, causing urine to spread into her abdominal cavity. That's what was reported at the time, as was the "fact" he also raped Rappe with a Champagne bottle. The reality is that was not what happened. It is now believed that she died as the result of a botched end and that Arbuckle never touched her. Arbuckle was acquitted of causing Rappe's rest, but it didn't matter - the rumors did such a good job that to this day, people still believe he end her. I bring up this unrelated situation because Arbuckle, his career in ruins after it all, had no recourse against the media. They were reporting what their "sources" told them and the journalists did not have to provide any proof of their "sources" because of the way the law is. Confidential sources are protected, whether they exist or not. The most famous recent example of a source being protected is "Deep Throat" - Woodward and Bernstein will not reveal the name until DT dies. Some people don't think DT even exists - that it's a composite of several different informants within the Nixon White House. If such a source was not legally protected, don't you think someone would have taken Woodward & Bernstein to court by now in order to get them to divulge the name?