Toto Riina
– By Scott Sayare –
BOSTON — On Wednesday, Le Monde (along with the Telegraph, ANSA and Corriere della Sera, among others, and the New York Times, though two weeks behind its European counterparts) covered what appears to have become a source of popular outrage (the Italian government, at least, has thought it wise to weigh in on the issue): Facebook groups dedicated to the glorification of recently incarcerated mafiosi (see an example here).
The piece quotes unnamed group members calling Toto Riina, the infamous mafia boss arrested and jailed in 1993 after being charged with over 100 murder counts, “a great man who fought for all of us,” “misunderstood,” “innocent.” Facebook users have made similar statements, the piece says, about Bernardo Provenzano, another, albeit apparently less popular (if one considers “number of Facebook group members” to be a reliable index of actual popularity), boss, arrested in 2006 after 43 years in hiding.
Certainly, there is a certain moral repugnance to the beatification of such callous, violent men; the Italian government, joining with citizen protesters, has called for investigation into the members of their Facebook fanclubs. But all of this raises important social and journalistic questions: How seriously should we be taking Facebook? Is it journalistically sound to treat statements made on Facebook (or elsewhere in the realm of online social networking) with the same seriousness as statements knowingly provided to a reporter for the purposes of publication? Is it acceptable to quote Facebook users anonymously?
I doubt that an American editor would have allowed a piece like what appeared in Le Monde to go to print; inflammatory statements made in the relative anonymity of cyberspace do not strike me as fair game, or particularly meaningful or impressive, for a piece on popular support of Mafiosi.
Facebook, to my mind, exists and has always existed to allow and encourage extreme, outrageous, sometimes disingenuous behavior. Think: drunk photos, “friends” you’ve never met in person, inane discussions broadcast for the world to see, the “poke” feature (wherein one user indicates his or her romantic interest in a co-user, with the possibility of claiming electronic error, “It was a joke,” or some other excuse rendered plausible by electronic distance, in the event of rejection). One thinks twice about engaging in such behavior in real life; on Facebook, it’s part of the culture, and all it takes is the click of a mouse. The consequences feel equally trivial. Facebook users treat the site as a safe haven in which to entertain their narcissistic, voyeuristic tendencies; the press ought to treat it as such.
The American press’s mistrust of Facebook seems to me, then, a more sound approach than that of the French. But where we draw the line vis-à-vis the legitimacy of online communication will doubtless be an important, ongoing discussion in years to come.
The Le Monde piece also touched on the issue of online censorship, noting that Facebook’s administrators in California declined to remove the mafia groups from the site, though they recently froze the accounts of mothers who had posted profile pictures in which they were shown breast-feeding. This, to the French, is more backwards, puritanical American moralizing that endorses free speech so long as it doesn’t involve nudity:
Problem: the bounds of what the site deems acceptable seem to vary. These same Facebook directors in fact just removed the “profiles” of a number of mothers which showed them nursing their infants. Those images were “obscene;” a dual standard that has angered users. And even if a number of experts have bent over backwards to explain the American paradox wherein a nursing mother can prove disturbing to the community at large while freedom of expression remains sacred, the revolt is brewing online.
If you ask me, they’ve got a point.
1 Comment
01.19.2009 at 16:51
I particularly like these taken as a whole … it is starting to flesh out the subtle differences btw US and France.