It is clear why Heidi Crumrine is the 2018 New Hampshire Teacher of the Year. She has written an elegant and balanced column (Monitor Forum, May 24) describing her experiences in Washington, D.C., that challenged her “faith in humanity,” yet concluded that with love and kindness “people are better than you expect them to be.”
Not being a teacher and not being as generous in spirit, I was more moved by the viral fake news story and the personal devastation it caused. The false attack on Mandy Manning, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year, and her family, children and students is shameful. The speed with which these abhorrent lies spread on the internet and the resulting harm caused to honest, kind and unsuspecting citizens is appalling.
As reported, the false and doctored video led to death threats to Manning’s children and threats of deportation to her students. This targeting of innocents by partisan freaks is now a common occurrence. There is nothing robust about fake news; the marketplace of ideas is contaminated by defamatory speech that breeds and spreads the contagion of ill will and hatred.
Falsities that are unimaginable are uttered with a reckless disregard of the truth, but all is not lost – victims can fight back. Free speech is not free when it is false. Those who are defamed and victims of this type of depravity have legal remedies. We now see victims of these misogynist defamers using the legal process to fight back.
Just recently, six families of victims killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the scene, filed a defamation lawsuit against radio personality Alex Jones, who has repeatedly called the massacre fake.
We hope the Sandy Hook families get millions of dollars in damages and bankrupt Jones and everything he owns or touches and everyone who supported his defamatory campaign.
We hope that Mandy Manning sues the Independent Journal Review and its parent company and puts them into the trash bin of bankruptcy. Hateful and defamatory speech is never free and it comes at a cost – let legal judgments be entered.
(Steven Gordon and Lucy Karl live in Hopkinton.)