Dare Say Nothing but the Truth

SEAN NGUYEN
Staff Writer

It can be easy for people–journalists included– to relegate journalism to be nothing more than words on paper. However, the profound influence of media extends its reach across the perceptions and decisions of countless families and individuals. Good journalism enables people to make informed decisions and the journalists involved are entirely responsible for ensuring that this process continues to provide the truth and nothing but the truth.

Yet, what happens when journalism goes awry? What happens when the writers and reporters that we rely on fail to report only the most accurate of news? For all the merits and benefits journalism provides to the masses, careless or sloppy journalism can just as easily become the ruin of individual figures and families. Take the recent controversy behind football player Manti Te’o for example. Media outlets across the nation lauded Te’o’s perseverance and will to continue playing football for Notre Dame even though his grandmother and girlfriend had recently passed away. Nevertheless, why do we no longer consider Te’o to be an enduring football star to be proud of? Because the journalists originally behind the story failed to dig deep and accurately represent the reality of the story and because it turns out, in truth, Te’o’s girlfriend was nothing more than a sham.

That’s right. The center of national news, a star football player’s deceased girlfriend, never existed in the first place. It had been reported that Te’o maintained the fabricated relationship with his supposedly Stanford educated girlfriend exclusively through the Internet and that Te’o had, in fact, lied to his own parents about meeting her in person.

The reality, however, is nowhere close. After someone finally went through the process of actually investigating this said girlfriend, it turns out that the pictures Te’o had thought to belong to his deceased love belonged to another woman who is still very much alive. Now, the question is whether Te’o himself had known that this girlfriend was fake. Now, the center of the nation’s attention is on Te’o’s fake girlfriend, and how this debacle came to be. Sure, it was Te’o himself who told the press about the loss of his grandmother and his girlfriend. However, a journalist’s job is not about regurgitating the words of others and presenting them as fact. A journalist’s job is to investigate and pick apart the truth piece by piece through research and careful observation. In the rush to capitalize on this sensational story, the journalists involved limited their perspective to only Te’o himself.

As a consequence, the reputations of Te’o, his family and even the reputation of Notre Dame itself are at stake. If the facts had been investigated thoroughly before publishing the story, the whole debacle could have been avoided and Te’o could simply have remained an untarnished star in the world of college football rather than a pitiful victim of a laughable Internet hoax.

In the end, it does no good to simply criticize the mistakes of others. However, it is important to recognize the effect that sloppy journalism can have on the lives of others. Although the efforts of journalists can sometimes be taken for granted, the writers and reporters of news cannot afford to ignore the consequences of the information they portray as genuine when so many people rely on them to make their everyday decisions.