Part Four: Who can we trust?

Hi and welcome back to my blog! 

It is finally in these chapters that justice is served and Walter McMillian is released from death row (woohoo!). This long-awaited event arrived after the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled McMillian a new trial. The new ABI’s (Alabama Bureau of Investigations) report made it impossible for the state to find a reason to prosecute McMillian again after finding a more likely suspect, a white man who had been stalking Ronda Morrison. This led to the state siding with Stevenson to eradicate the charges. The new judge, Pamela Baschab, made the trial short and simple, “‘Mr. Stevenson, if you’ll just present the motion and provide a brief summary, I don't need any arguments or statements, I intend to grant the motion immediately so you all can get home’”(Stevenson 223). After six unjustified years on death row, McMillian was finally freed.

As exciting as this news is, in this blog, I want to look at McMillian’s case from a different perspective, the media’s view. So far in this book, we have really only seen Stevenson’s view of McMillian. For many of us, McMillian is a kind and hardworking person. But, for others, they see him as a “sexual predator” and “gang leader”. In fact, many of the newspapers in Monroe County published false headlines regarding McMillian and the murder. Some of these titles were “McMillian Charged with Sodomy”, “Ronda Wasn’t the Only Girl Killed”, and the longest one yet, “Myers and McMillian were part of a burglary, theft, forgery, and drug smuggling ring that operated in several counties in South Alabama, according to law enforcement officers. McMillian was the leader of the operation”. It’s clear that the media was painting a different picture, one that villainized McMillian. Unfortunately, many people focused on the headlines, rather than the truth. 

Sound familiar? 

In today’s world, this is what we would call “fake news”. With the internet, millions of news websites can publish their own articles, whether or not it is true information. For example, during the 2016 election, false stories such as “Hillary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS and Pope Francis endorsing Trump for President” ("Statistics & Facts about Fake News.") were being retweeted and commented on. It hasn’t stopped there. In fact, the growth of social media has made it one of the main sources where “fake news’ comes from. According to a Buzzfeed report, the most popular fake news stories are from Facebook, where on average the stories get 22 million shares and comments (Ahmad). Below is an infographic that details some of the most heinous stories published.

(Ahmad)

Some credit should be given to Facebook because they are making efforts to fix their “fake news” problem. These efforts include page information, third-party fact-checking, related post listings, and tips and tools on how to detect “fake news”. 

But in reality, the solution to the problem starts with us. We need to be educated in knowing when we encounter fake news. The websites and social media outlets need to do their job in monitoring their content but we need to play our part in being smart when it comes to the internet. In an article published by NPR, it talks about how students in Ukraine are learning how to discern propaganda, hate speech, and fake stories from real news. Ukraine teachers are incorporating media literacy training into their lessons and the results are showing. In a recent study, it found that students who took those lessons were 18% more successful in identifying fake news compared to the students who didn’t (Ingber). 

America needs to work on reducing fake news, whether through education or the sites themselves, something needs to be done. As Mike Caulfield, a leader in the national digital literacy initiative said, “Often places that are the most vulnerable [to disinformation] are where large social divisions are being actively exploited by bad actors”. Isn’t that America? 

Going back to the book, it definitely shows the negative effects false media can have, even back in the 1990s. The local headlines that slandered McMillian pitted most of Monroe County against him. Even with a supportive family, he had to spend his first week of freedom in Montgomery and the following couple months in Florida with his sister, before he moved back to Monroe County. 

The conflicting thing is when McMillian was released, the media used his story to analyze and discuss the death penalty and the justice system in America. The media was finally willing to recognize McMillian and his situation. But does that justify all the times the media told lies that aided in ruining his reputation? 

I don’t think the lesson is that the media is our enemy, but it’s not our friend either. We need to be smarter and more careful of the information we read before we start forming an opinion. 

Here is an infographic containing important questions to ask when spotting fake news: 

(How to Spot False News.)

Thank you for reading!