In 2021, I had a mental health crisis at the airport that ended in eight police officers beating me black and blue and confiscating my cat*, whom I was traveling with. I don’t remember what I did besides falling asleep on the floor, and I don’t remember resisting arrest, but in the weeks after I was at my most emotionally raw and vulnerable.
I feel grateful every single day that no one filmed the incident and put it online. I’m certain I would have been a danger to myself if, after undergoing a traumatic and humiliating experience due to my psychiatric impairments, I’d also been the laughingstock of the internet.
When I saw Gomas’ video online my heart broke and I worried that she would hurt herself. I’m really relieved to hear that she’s alive and supported. I feel like there’s a shocking level of cruelty in laughing at the mentally ill at their most vulnerable and an immoral level of mercenary profit-seeking in breathlessly churning out monetizable news content on a sick private individual who needs nothing more than space to heal. If I were an editor of a news outlet, I’d be hard-pressed not to fire someone who wanted to run those stories. Just because it’s caught on film doesn’t make it news.
*I got the cat back safe and sound but not easily.
Thank you for this one! I read something about this story last month and was just deeply bothered by what this person would have been going through and how their trauma was being treated.
Thank you for this one Parker! I completely agree with the sentiment that it was completely unwarranted attention and IMO a complete invasion of her privacy. It’s one thing if random people online take something too far and Doxx someone’s whole existence. But this was a repeating news story covering this woman’s entire life. It felt incredibly irresponsible in the face of just getting more clicks and attention. I don’t understand this lack of humanity in certain publications idea of journalism. I’m not saying they can’t report on it, hell sometimes it could be helpful to further launch the discussion of maybe highlighting mental health resources or ways to identify that someone is experiencing a crisis and ways to help. But this was just a an opportunity for clicks. I’m constantly disappointed by modern outlets and I appreciate that you’ve taken a repeated stance of asking for better. Thanks you.
What's even frustrating with this is that no journalist or editor has any excuse not to foresee how this reporting can destroy people, both in general, or specifically around leaked footage to the internet, because it literally happens all the time and the media writes articles about how these people's lives are impacted.
Sites like TikTok and Reddit have "theoretically" robust policies to prevent doxxing, but they are absolutely terrible about enforcement - your best hope is they close the barn door after all the horses are out. And that's before you get to sites like X where the rules only apply if they make Elon look bad. But none of them have editorial brakes like journalism - there's a huge difference between "hopefully someone notices and does something" and "a journalist showed their article to an editor who approved it".
Luckily, I'm sure AI journalism will handle this with proper grace and tact, right? Right?
I completely agree with you here -- and thank you for writing this. Years ago I witnessed a similar crisis on a plane and it was tragic for everyone. Fortunately those onboard (and especially airplane personnel) were compassionate and helpful. My own public peeve is toward parents who post video of their tantruming toddlers -- filming them instead of comforting them. It is an extreme violation of a person's right to leave their toughest moments unseen by strangers. And the fact that these videos end up being covered as "news" and shared far and wide is despicable.
Agree those are awful! I blame those sick shows like "America's funniest videos" They encourage bad parents, with poor ethics, to mistreat their child, so it has a predictable tantrum result, just to get on TV.
I really appreciate this post. It breaks my heart to see the public and/or the media go after someone like a pack of wolves chasing wounded prey, all in the name of a few clicks. Public figure or not, we ALL have moments that we are not at our best. The cruelty and invasiveness of those who film and share displays a lack of compassion that is all too common. (Maybe they could put down their phones and see if they can help?) Many of the people doing the pointing and laughing simply don't distinguish between reality TV (chosen) and private difficulties that get caught on film. That's bad enough. But when supposedly professionally trained journalists pile on - and their editors and publishers encourage them to go further - there's something very wrong with the situation.
A solid piece, Parker - though we disagree on one point.
As I've advocated for years, I absolutely think there should be professional, official rules for what media orgs are allowed to use the term "news" to describe what they produce. Along with those rules, there should be benefits for those individuals and organizations who follow the rules - and penalties for those that don't.
The existence of such rules wouldn't prevent monstrous people & organizations from producing whatever drek and garbage they choose. But such rules, written and managed correctly, would shrink the viral nature of abusing people on the internet for traffic.
We may have even had this discussion online at some point, and agreed to disagree. I've had this debate with any number of people, some who've surprised me either way on where they come down.
Where we do agree is that the abuse of people at their worst public moments, often in the midst of mental health crises, is simply inexcusable for media organizations to use as a way to gain more traffic.
Did you watch the second video of her in the airport after she exited the plane? She was like something is going to happen to that plane. Do NOT let that plane take off.
First of all, I'm glad to see she only apologized to the other people on the plane. (I guess she posted it because she has no way of knowing who they are and no other way of communicating with them.)
But to your main point, I just want to reiterate something I learned early on: Never forget that every journalist knows literally hundreds of things they don't publish. In situations like this, they often try to pretend that "know a thing --> publish a thing" is some automatic process, or a natural process like the weather. It's not. It's always a decision.
Murdoch's NYP is very much a tabloid, as is The Daily Mail. (my Brit friends call it "the daily fail") Too many serious newspaper has turned to that "click bait" style of headlines, I left WaPo because they hired such a headline writer, he often uses Maga-words in his headlines so, I'm sure they hired someone's (otherwise unemployable) Maga-Nephew just to get him off his mom's couch.
This was a good article, but at the same time... I hate to apply any kind of narrative that plays into the highly-destructive "Fake News" medium that we've been enduring in recent news. But, the fact of the matter is that the News doesn't really consider 'what people need to know' these days. It's fully a commercial animal, concerned only with ad revenue and maintaining engagement, and they willingly perform acts far worse than this. So, yeah. I agree with the sentiment, I wish our news media would hold themselves to a higher standard, but I have no faith in that actually happening or resonating. I expect that anyone who consistently brought up this kind of thing would end up fired.
They are tabloids and don't do "ethics" they paint her as a privileged, pampered, person to encourage hate. Unfortunately, WaPo, and the NYT are following them into the sewer. You are right, we, the pubic, do not "need" to know...any of this gossip. It is the press equivalent of (so-called) reality TV, and appeals to the lowest common denominator. I somehow missed the whole thing.
I’m also glad you did this post, Parker. Too many people have gotten caught up and chewed up by becoming the latest viral object of mockery. When newspapers (the so called mainstream media) jump in, it makes it so much worse.
I think of the old saying “in war truth is the first casualty.” Now when it comes to clicks, ethics seems to be the first casualty.
Thank you for this. Subscribing now.
In 2021, I had a mental health crisis at the airport that ended in eight police officers beating me black and blue and confiscating my cat*, whom I was traveling with. I don’t remember what I did besides falling asleep on the floor, and I don’t remember resisting arrest, but in the weeks after I was at my most emotionally raw and vulnerable.
I feel grateful every single day that no one filmed the incident and put it online. I’m certain I would have been a danger to myself if, after undergoing a traumatic and humiliating experience due to my psychiatric impairments, I’d also been the laughingstock of the internet.
When I saw Gomas’ video online my heart broke and I worried that she would hurt herself. I’m really relieved to hear that she’s alive and supported. I feel like there’s a shocking level of cruelty in laughing at the mentally ill at their most vulnerable and an immoral level of mercenary profit-seeking in breathlessly churning out monetizable news content on a sick private individual who needs nothing more than space to heal. If I were an editor of a news outlet, I’d be hard-pressed not to fire someone who wanted to run those stories. Just because it’s caught on film doesn’t make it news.
*I got the cat back safe and sound but not easily.
Thank you for this one! I read something about this story last month and was just deeply bothered by what this person would have been going through and how their trauma was being treated.
Thank you for this one Parker! I completely agree with the sentiment that it was completely unwarranted attention and IMO a complete invasion of her privacy. It’s one thing if random people online take something too far and Doxx someone’s whole existence. But this was a repeating news story covering this woman’s entire life. It felt incredibly irresponsible in the face of just getting more clicks and attention. I don’t understand this lack of humanity in certain publications idea of journalism. I’m not saying they can’t report on it, hell sometimes it could be helpful to further launch the discussion of maybe highlighting mental health resources or ways to identify that someone is experiencing a crisis and ways to help. But this was just a an opportunity for clicks. I’m constantly disappointed by modern outlets and I appreciate that you’ve taken a repeated stance of asking for better. Thanks you.
What's even frustrating with this is that no journalist or editor has any excuse not to foresee how this reporting can destroy people, both in general, or specifically around leaked footage to the internet, because it literally happens all the time and the media writes articles about how these people's lives are impacted.
Sites like TikTok and Reddit have "theoretically" robust policies to prevent doxxing, but they are absolutely terrible about enforcement - your best hope is they close the barn door after all the horses are out. And that's before you get to sites like X where the rules only apply if they make Elon look bad. But none of them have editorial brakes like journalism - there's a huge difference between "hopefully someone notices and does something" and "a journalist showed their article to an editor who approved it".
Luckily, I'm sure AI journalism will handle this with proper grace and tact, right? Right?
I completely agree with you here -- and thank you for writing this. Years ago I witnessed a similar crisis on a plane and it was tragic for everyone. Fortunately those onboard (and especially airplane personnel) were compassionate and helpful. My own public peeve is toward parents who post video of their tantruming toddlers -- filming them instead of comforting them. It is an extreme violation of a person's right to leave their toughest moments unseen by strangers. And the fact that these videos end up being covered as "news" and shared far and wide is despicable.
Agree those are awful! I blame those sick shows like "America's funniest videos" They encourage bad parents, with poor ethics, to mistreat their child, so it has a predictable tantrum result, just to get on TV.
I really appreciate this post. It breaks my heart to see the public and/or the media go after someone like a pack of wolves chasing wounded prey, all in the name of a few clicks. Public figure or not, we ALL have moments that we are not at our best. The cruelty and invasiveness of those who film and share displays a lack of compassion that is all too common. (Maybe they could put down their phones and see if they can help?) Many of the people doing the pointing and laughing simply don't distinguish between reality TV (chosen) and private difficulties that get caught on film. That's bad enough. But when supposedly professionally trained journalists pile on - and their editors and publishers encourage them to go further - there's something very wrong with the situation.
A solid piece, Parker - though we disagree on one point.
As I've advocated for years, I absolutely think there should be professional, official rules for what media orgs are allowed to use the term "news" to describe what they produce. Along with those rules, there should be benefits for those individuals and organizations who follow the rules - and penalties for those that don't.
The existence of such rules wouldn't prevent monstrous people & organizations from producing whatever drek and garbage they choose. But such rules, written and managed correctly, would shrink the viral nature of abusing people on the internet for traffic.
We may have even had this discussion online at some point, and agreed to disagree. I've had this debate with any number of people, some who've surprised me either way on where they come down.
Where we do agree is that the abuse of people at their worst public moments, often in the midst of mental health crises, is simply inexcusable for media organizations to use as a way to gain more traffic.
Did you watch the second video of her in the airport after she exited the plane? She was like something is going to happen to that plane. Do NOT let that plane take off.
oh my sweet summer child; clickworthiness won out over newsworthiness years & years ago, even (or especially) at the big corporate outlets
First of all, I'm glad to see she only apologized to the other people on the plane. (I guess she posted it because she has no way of knowing who they are and no other way of communicating with them.)
But to your main point, I just want to reiterate something I learned early on: Never forget that every journalist knows literally hundreds of things they don't publish. In situations like this, they often try to pretend that "know a thing --> publish a thing" is some automatic process, or a natural process like the weather. It's not. It's always a decision.
It's just tabloid journalism, plain and simple. 30 years ago we'd see her face plastered across the supermarket checkout for months; now it's Twitter.
Murdoch's NYP is very much a tabloid, as is The Daily Mail. (my Brit friends call it "the daily fail") Too many serious newspaper has turned to that "click bait" style of headlines, I left WaPo because they hired such a headline writer, he often uses Maga-words in his headlines so, I'm sure they hired someone's (otherwise unemployable) Maga-Nephew just to get him off his mom's couch.
This was a good article, but at the same time... I hate to apply any kind of narrative that plays into the highly-destructive "Fake News" medium that we've been enduring in recent news. But, the fact of the matter is that the News doesn't really consider 'what people need to know' these days. It's fully a commercial animal, concerned only with ad revenue and maintaining engagement, and they willingly perform acts far worse than this. So, yeah. I agree with the sentiment, I wish our news media would hold themselves to a higher standard, but I have no faith in that actually happening or resonating. I expect that anyone who consistently brought up this kind of thing would end up fired.
I avoided this story because it seemed more like spectacle than news. That said, these stories probing the details of this woman's life are noxious.
They are tabloids and don't do "ethics" they paint her as a privileged, pampered, person to encourage hate. Unfortunately, WaPo, and the NYT are following them into the sewer. You are right, we, the pubic, do not "need" to know...any of this gossip. It is the press equivalent of (so-called) reality TV, and appeals to the lowest common denominator. I somehow missed the whole thing.
I’m also glad you did this post, Parker. Too many people have gotten caught up and chewed up by becoming the latest viral object of mockery. When newspapers (the so called mainstream media) jump in, it makes it so much worse.
I think of the old saying “in war truth is the first casualty.” Now when it comes to clicks, ethics seems to be the first casualty.