A person never dies on the Internet. How lucky is that for someone who
craves immortality.
Unfortunately, reputation as we have come to honor it counts for
nothing in cyberspace.
For some, the price of eternal fame is worth all the millions of
mentions and references, accurate or not, he or she gets on the
worldwide Web.
However, some people want quiet in their lives. They seek the peace of
anonymity. They want privacy. They want to know no one knows their
name. In today’s world of “the more you know the better off you are”
there are those who want to escape celebrity. Three cheers for them
and good luck. Wake up. It may never happen.
Due to the huge financial scandals over the last years, we know that
once a person sends or receives e-mail the message lives forever. It
is impossible to wipe any note from a hard drive. The United States
government and other official entities not American, and the legion of
dedicated hackers, have ways of discovering everything a person ever
wrote. Now with the new science of computer forensics, where
specialists can mine hard drives for even instant messages, hidden
spread sheets, and once thought dead word processing documents, it is
harder than ever to conceal the past. Unless, of course, the writer
destroys his or her hard drive or sinks it in the ocean in a tub of
concrete the way gangsters once did to those they cruelly eliminated.
E-mail as something immortal is a major problem that no one will
probably ever solve. Until someone develops software that wipes out,
at his or her discretion, any or all messages, any injudicious musings
in digital, we are all victims of the new media.
However, we face an even bigger quandary and this concerns the
Internet at large, the world of cyberspace, infinite and timeless.
Nothing and I mean nothing ever placed on the worldwide Web dies. Once
on the Internet, whatever the listing, the sentence, the thought, the
fragment, whatever is there about a person, his or her life, it
remains there forever. Right or wrong, true or false, correct or in
error, those so-called “facts” become part of one’s history, one’s
life, and one’s lore. It becomes you whether you like it or not.
Because of the complexity and the inability to kill material from the
original provider of the information, a person is stuck in a ring of
hell that not even Dante envisioned. And, as we all realize, if the
information is wrong, a person’s reputation faces ruin. With that
staring him or her in the face, he or she will probably struggle
mightily to right the ship of accuracy. Sadly, failure is usually the
result. The carrier where the information first appeared does nothing
to clean up the problem. After all, said carrier, whether old media or
new, has too much to do just keeping up with the new to worry about
correcting the old.
However, no one, including reporters, is immune to making mistakes.
And in this new world of 2.0, and the influx of so-called citizen
journalists, there are more mistakes than ever. That is the human
condition. It is the reason we have editors. Sometimes these editors,
and even plain, untrained folk, catch errors, offer corrections the
next day or later, as they attempt to reverse the mistake. But it is
not always the case. Interested parties cannot erase words already
online. Remember, those words are in place forever and impossible to
eradicate. It is rare that newspapers, online publications, and
magazines make corrections with all due speed. Often it never happens.
We, as journalists and citizens, have to decide who and what we are
willing to save and what person, business or reputation we are willing
to sacrifice.
The majority rules in a democracy, so says the common knowledge.
Everyone deserves a vote. If true, the minority, even if it is one,
must somehow get recompense. Is this a greater good that those in
media must serve to help make the world a better place? I am not sure
we have the time or power always to do that, but something tells me we
will be morally better off as professionals and purveyors of news if
we make the effort to clean-up a reputation, and save someone’s skin,
rather than to destroy a person for either a self-made mistake or an
error made by another. Of course, there are commentators who are
against cleansing a reputation. In other words, once written, it is
set in stone, never to change. That is just tough luck in a world
meaner spirited than kind. But who among us has never transgressed?
Who among us has never thought better of a bad move we made minutes,
days, years later? If the transgression is redeemable, should that
person always suffer for it? I think not. Is this something we can do
or should we, as some commentators believe, forget about it, let the
sleeping dog lie and thus let the maligned person suffer. As long as
there are commentators who in their arrogance are willing to sacrifice
a person either because there is not enough time to repair the damage
or, worse, no desire to fix a mistake, nothing will change.
Face it, once ingrained on the Web, eternal life -- good, bad,
indifferent, right or wrong, flabby or strong – makes no difference.
Life on the Web, sometimes construed as death or a near death
experience, is forever. Powerful institutions and individuals who lack
power can do little to change what the Web says you are or are not.
Get used to it. ........................................................................................................................
At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002.
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