Journalism doesn’t get any more irresponsible than John McCann’s column in today’s Herald-Sun. After setting the table with a few gratuitous Bush-bashing paragraphs and some blather about Christians, government and hypocrisy, McCann allows a woman he doesn’t even identify to accuse Virginia U.S. Sen. George Allen of being involved in racial incidents in high school in California. And what made McCann give credence to this hearsay?
Handing me a 1969 yearbook, Mary pointed out the future senator’s picture. She was a sophomore then, and remembers a time when the school’s walls were decorated with “DIE WHITEY” graffiti made to look as if it was inked by black students from Morningside High School. But Allen and his cronies were responsible for it, she said.
“We all knew that he did it,” said Mary, a registered Republican.
So, there you have it. A woman makes a claim, has absolutely no evidence that she’s telling the truth, except for a high school yearbook that contains Allen’s photo. And since Allen attended the high school nearly 40 years ago where this happened, well, it just has to be true. McCann says he tried to verify these claims, but failing to do so, he just ran them in the newspaper. But they must be true, coming as they do from a “registered Republican.”
Did it ever occur to McCann that in 1969 in California “DIE WHITEY” grafitti was much more likely to have been written by Black Panther or other black power group sympathizers in vogue at the time, especially in California. Do the names Huey Newton, H. “Rap” Brown and Eldridge Cleaver mean anything to him? I know this is an opinion column, but one doesn’t completely abandon the standards of journalism, even in a column.
