Media role appalling

I have had a difficult time trying to assess clearly the proliferating charges of sexual harassment. In the first place, the misbehavior is harassment, not sexuality and certainly not gender. Sex and gender have to do with human nature and are beyond the law. Secondly, the misbehavior, wrong-headed and lamentable though it may be, is varying in degrees of harassment, but it is always the salacious bits that drive the story. Third, the charges are not made in court but in the media — social, print and broadcast; the case is tried in media; the conviction and sentencing are pronounced in media. It may go a step too far to say the atmosphere is inquisitorial, but it smacks of vigilantism; it has the odor of the HUAC hearings of the 1950s.

I do not judge the allegations or the women who make them. I am appalled by the role of media. They have appropriated the material for their own interests. The losers in the general outcry are truth and justice, trounced by media traffic and the almighty dollar. There may be individuals who hope to profit financially or politically, but they find a willing agent for their enterprise in media.

Gregory Chipps

Spokane