The Weekly Screed (#551)

Little white girls and the ethical renaissance of journalism
by David Benjamin

PARIS — The conventional wisdom is that — with the phone-hacking scandal that killed the British penny-dreadful, News of the World, after 168 years — journalism has sunk to a new low. But there is an opposing view — which I share — that through this trauma, journalism has drawn a bright, clear ethical line. It has established a moral and professional standard that every publisher, broadcaster, editor, reporter, pundit, blogger, photographer, flamer and hacker can use as a fixed star and guiding light.

Call it the Little White Girl Imperative (or LWG).

The Little White Girl Imperative — which has stood as a de facto standard for quality journalism for as long as two decades — states that when news of the abduction and murder of a little white girl appears in the news, all other information becomes irrelevant. Any but the most cursory coverage of non-LWG news must be considered a gross violation of reportorial ethics, subject to dismissal and possible prosecution.

The Little White Girl Imperative was vividly illustrated when, as we all know now, News of the World reporters hacked into the cell-phone account of Milly Dowler, age 13 — who had been abducted and killed — so they could intercept new messages to Milly while deleting old messages. These lawless invasions of privacy — which left her family with the cruel impression that Milly was alive and accessing her voicemail — were a regular practice among Rupert Murdoch’s newshounds.

Scotland Yard has revealed that News of the World and other yellow rags run by Murdoch had been hacking for years into the lives of some 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims. Scotland Yard has 11,000 pages of evidence, which they keep in a Hefty bag in the basement. Neither government nor the media was even remotely interested in any of this privacy rape until Milly Dowler’s tragedy activated the Little White Girl Imperative.

The vengeful ghost of Milly Dowler has since led to the arrest of the highest executive at News International, the withdrawal of Murdoch’s $12 billion bid to control BSkyB, and the disgrace of (and half-hearted apologies by) a vast tabloid sleaze-machine that previously did not know the meaning of the word “shame.”

Lest we view this ethical awakening as solely British, I think it’s safe to proudly assert that the U.S. media is the real author of the Little White Girl Imperative. How else to explain the fame of a nobody named Casey Anthony? While the nation wallowed in joblessness, while the U.S. debt ceiling battle threatened to wreck the world’s economy, while 27 distinct Republican presidential hopefuls were vying for the attention of voters, the legal fate of a narcissistic floozy in Florida monopolized TV-news airtime and the front page of every tabloid from coast to coast. All this because Ms. Anthony was tried on TV (and convicted by Fox News) for murdering her incredibly cute two-year-old daughter Caylee and burying the kid in the obligatory shallow grave.

There’s more. After the terrible Tucson shooting spree, aimed at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by crazed assassin Jared Loughner, the media noted that President Obama had struck the perfect note by focusing his sad reflections not on a gravely wounded adult politician, but on another victim — killed in the attack — Christina-Taylor Green, age 9. The press agreed unanimously that playing the little-white-girl card was a master stroke of political cunning by a black president in a redneck state.

The U.S. media’s morbid (but deeply compassionate) fixation on dead, sodomized and dismembered pre-pubescent white girls — especially if there’s before-and-after film of a) the frolicking toddler and b) the mangled remains— dates back decades. Hardly an American born in the last forty years cannot recite the honor roll of dead Little White Girls who’ve swelled the coffers of CNN, boosted Fox News’ ratings and lingered ad nauseam on the front pages of the Post, the Daily News and the Enquirer. We know most of these darlings just by first names: Polly and Megan triggered the greatest revival of vigilantism since anti-lynching laws ruined a lot of fun for a lot of folks. JonBenét touched everyone’s heart, drove her entire family insane, discredited the Boulder Police Department forever, and gave fresh (though ironic) momentum to the strange and unwonderful child beauty pageant racket.

The next logical step for media everywhere is to agree that the definition of real news — the only news that’s fit to print, broadcast or post — is news that reveals, details and exploits, for months or even years, to the exclusion of all other public information, the tawdry, sketchy and voyeuristic chronicle of a suburban white family entangled in the bewildering disappearance and/or rape and death of a tiny daughter. By focusing their every energy on reporting each specious rumor, by dwelling on hyperbolic accusations and pre-judging the outcome, by slandering police and glorifying celebrity lawyers, and by hounding the victim’s family into lifelong seclusion, the media will simplify its mission in society. It will deal only with one simple, visceral topic infinitely gratifying to the public’s grubbiest instincts, rather than trying to explain stuff, like Keynesian economics and global warning, that nobody will ever understand.

The next logical step for public figures — especially politicians — will be to align their ambitions with the Little White Girl Imperative. For example, don’t be surprised if the craftiest candidate for president in 2016 (or even 2012) springs the perfect October Surprise. He (or she) personally oversees the torture and confession of the kidnapper of Debby-Sue Something-or-Other, after which the candidate rushes from the interrogation and — accompanied by his (or her) pastor and his (or her) dog, Rex — reaches, before anyone else, the abandoned mine shaft at the bottom of which poor little Debby-Sue has been locked by her fiendish abductor in a tiny, dark cell with nothing but a rag doll, a crust of bread and a slop bucket for 27 ghastly, claustrophobic days.

The rescue comes with only minutes to spare before Debby-Sue’s death. On the following Tuesday, not one well-informed American votes for the rescuer’s Democratic opponent (or happens to read a bulletin on the Mother Jones website about how the mine shaft coincidentally belongs to the President-elect’s brother-in-law, Marvin).