A high school friend has been sharing her collection of photos from the late 1980s and early 1990s on social media. The grainy pictures evoke feelings of nostalgia for what now feels like a “simpler” and “better” time (it wasn’t, of course) accompanied by intense gratitude that the internet wasn’t documenting our every move back in the day. I can only imagine how many more of us would have lengthy records if local law enforcement — with whom we were already on a first-name basis — had been able to view all our misbehavior online.
Some years ago we started hearing that new college graduates were having trouble getting jobs after prospective employers reviewed their social media posts. What goes online can prove detrimental later, whether it’s a bad habit of playing keyboard warrior and being a jerk in the comment section, potentially incriminating photos or unflattering news reports.
The staying power of these social media posts is gradually changing how the news media covers crime, but it’s a slow process. Going through our archives from 25 and 50 years ago, it was common practice to publish the names of everyone who got arrested and why. Every MIP (minor in possession), every DUI, every disorderly conduct and domestic assault and more landed on the pages of the weekly paper with names, dates, and details. We’ve run across some interesting tidbits, most of which are best relegated to the newspaper “morgue” and forgotten. With print that’s pretty simple. Not so much with social media.
Policies are gradually changing to leave out names until after a case goes through the court process (unless the individual is a public figure or in a position of authority). Since getting arrested is not necessarily proof of guilt (that whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing), in the majority of cases it seems logical to wait until a person has a chance to plead his or her case in a court of law before reporting occurs.
Hopefully, none of you reading this will ever have reason to be concerned about the details of an arrest — or any other messy or embarrassing detail of life — finding its way to social media. Like a bad stain, once those kinds of posts are there, they are difficult to remove. It’s something to remember, and maybe something to be taught as part of media literacy… for the adults who came up in a time before security cameras and cell phones and social media. George Orwell warned us about Big Brother in “1984,” and we all nodded and glared angrily at “the government.” I don’t think any of us anticipated Big Brother would show up as a neighbor’s doorbell camera, a security video in an entertainment venue, a photo shared online from a random stranger’s cell phone, or a half-told news story on the internet with no follow-up, but here we are.
By NIKI TURNER | [email protected]
