By Lyonel Doherty
Oliver Chronicle
When is a story a non-story that turns into a story again?
Read on.
What started out as a possible news article could have fallen into the fake news pit without responsible journalism.
The Chronicle received an email from a man who claimed he was called a “white piece of shit” by a dark-skinned employee from a local business.
The man (a truck driver) had parked his vehicle on the property overnight. In the morning, the employee asked him to move the vehicle (because it was reportedly blocking an entranceway).
The driver claimed the employee was irate and started yelling and screaming at him. This was followed by the alleged racist comment.
The driver told the Chronicle that he wanted an apology, adding that the employee should be terminated.
But the employee had a totally different story.
He said the driver parked his truck at the entranceway just before closing time, but he didn’t bother to approach the man and decided to let him sleep.
In the morning the employee asked the driver to move his truck for customers trying to access the business. The driver said he would move but it would take 45 minutes.
It can only be surmised that the conversation went downhill from there.
The employee told the Chronicle that the driver said he was going to write a bad review of the business. The worker swears to God that he never uttered a racist comment to the driver.
The employee subsequently called the driver’s company and was told, by a company representative, that the driver had previous complaints against him relating to his attitude.
“I don’t want him to get fired . . . but I know I don’t have anything to apologize for,” the employee said.
Another driver from the same company contacted the Chronicle to support the store employee’s version of events. He raised concerns about the driver in question, saying there was a move to have him terminated.
After an initial investigation, the Chronicle decided not to publish the story using anyone’s name because it would have unfairly tarnished the business’s reputation.
We believe the employee did not make that racial comment, and it would have been irresponsible for us to run it as a regular news story, even when both sides were represented.
You really have to be careful about what people say. They could be telling the truth, embellishing it or totally fabricating it.
Too often people automatically believe what one person says without getting the other side of the story. Even when getting the other side, you have to ask yourself if publishing it will do more harm than good.
