An Ignorant Person With A Pen

Business Communications Management offers comprehensive media training that helps clients understand how the media works, the definition of newsworthy and how to prepare for interviews.

But things can go wrong even for the most media-savvy person.

Just ask Hollywood favourite Will Smith who was interviewed during a promotional tour for his film I Am Legend.

In an interview with the Scottish Daily Record newspaper Smith said he tries to see the good in everyone and that even someone like Hitler didn't set out to be evil and that Hitler thought he was doing 'good'.

Within hours headlines around the world read along the likes of Will Smith sees the good in Hitler, which is a complete, and it might be argued willful, misunderstanding of Smith's remark.

Smith quite rightly was incensed.

"It is an awful and disgusting lie," Smith said in a statement Monday provided by his publicist. "It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation. ... Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet."

US media commentator Dennis Prager has an excellent column piece looking at the worldwide spread of this untruth.

What is to be learned? The lessons are simple:

1. Don't trust a Web site that doesn't cite a reputable source for a news item (opinions columns have different standards).
2. Then, check that source.
3. Don't trust headlines in newspapers -- read the entire column.
4. When a person is quoted, read his original statement in context.

In the meantime, however, millions of people around the world will continue to believe the lie that Will Smith said that Hitler was a good man.

And the media will, apparently, pay no price.

Sadly it's not a new phenomenon. Actor William Boyd, best known to millions as the wholesome, upholder of the law, Hopalong Cassidy had his early Hollywood career derailed after a newspaper incorrectly used his photograph instead that of a stage actor of the same name who was up on liquor and gambling charges.

His (William 'Stage' Boyd's) bad behavior (which included arrests for alcohol and drug possession) not only wrecked his own career, but inadvertently derailed William Boyd's career as well. When the first stories broke about "Stage" Boyd's escapades, the photos splashed across the newspapers were of the wrong Boyd. The day before, Boyd had signed a large contract with RKO, one that was immediately terminated by invoking the morals clause.