The stated justification was a suspicion that the rumours were politically motivated \u2013 but in any case it started something of a trend, whereby social media-powered rumours met with official denials. Two years later, then health minister Chris Hipkins addressed a press conference in August of 2020, to deny rampant online speculation<\/a> suggesting a recent Covid-19 outbreak was caused by clandestine visits to managed isolation facilities. This set a pattern throughout the pandemic, with rumours flying about five children collapsing after vaccination<\/a> and sex workers sneaking across the border to Northland<\/a>, among numerous others.\u00a0<\/p>\n In most cases, once a particular level of ubiquity was reached, some part of our institutional apparatus whirred into action to deny the story, or refine it. This even happened in reverse at times, with Hipkins having to correct the record<\/a> \u2013 the sex workers in Northland weren\u2019t sex workers at all, and had legitimately issued travel papers.<\/p>\n What all these episodes have in common is a sense that once a rumour has sufficient velocity and distribution, it\u2019s dangerous to have it go unchallenged in the public arena. The public denial has become a familiar part of the narrative when major news events collide with widespread speculation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Except when no denial occurs.<\/p>\n The Tom Phillips case had transfixed the nation long before it reached its tragic conclusion in the early hours of last Monday morning. The way it ended ensured that it would be the only domestic story of the week, with saturation coverage across our news sites addressing every conceivable angle. Yet almost as soon as the facts emerged, so did an injunction preventing reporting<\/a> of \u201ccertain details of the case\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just as it does with name suppression, the injunction had the Streisand effect of further piquing already immense public interest. Seemingly within hours, a very specific and appalling rumour began circulating. I first received it via text, then heard it from a friend, who\u2019d heard it from a reporter, who heard it from a journalist on the ground near Marokopa. None of this makes the rumour true; anyone who has worked in news media for a while will have heard sensational stories that never stand up.\u00a0<\/p>\n This one kept going, though. I saw the parents of a friend later in the week and it was the first thing they spoke about. An overseas news outlet reported the speculation, before pulling it down, serving only to amplify it. Social media, particularly TikTok and Meta\u2019s platforms, are riddled with the claims. (Interestingly Reddit, which has long had a culture of volunteer moderation, has been far more circumspect).<\/p>\n These situations are particularly challenging for news media. If rumours are false and the media refutes them, they\u2019re still being repeated, which brings legal jeopardy even if the reporting contains an explicit denial. Yet when rumours are so widespread, to not report on them breeds mistrust: what are they hiding? And why?\u00a0<\/p>\n The pressure builds. Newstalk ZB\u2019s Heather du Plessis-Allan wrote an incendiary column for the Herald on Sunday yesterday<\/a> that got close to confirming the rumours, without naming them. \u201cOne day when some streaming service like Netflix \u2013 inevitably \u2013 does a hideous, invasive \u2018documentary\u2019 [the allegation will] be either the opening scene or the twist at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n She used this to argue for greater disclosure. \u201cI lean towards believing the injunction should be lifted\u2026 Because it allows at least some questions to be asked and answered. It allows the man to be assessed completely.\u201d She argues, persuasively, that injunctions and suppressions can feel like relics of a different era, one before smartphones and social media and generative AI.<\/p>\n That is true. Yet it\u2019s also true that our institutional reaction to prior episodes of rumours flying on social media has put authorities in a very awkward position here. By persistently issuing denials, we have created an expectation that we will be told when something isn\u2019t true. If we\u2019re not told, by implication, we\u2019re much more inclined to believe it.<\/p>\n I reached out to NZ Police on Friday, to ask under what circumstances they issue comment rejecting online speculation, and for any documentation that existed to frame up such a decision. At time of publication, I have received neither acknowledgement nor reply.<\/p>\n In many ways, I understand. They are in a tough bind. The case itself will be scrutinised and second-guessed for years to come. If true, the rumours cast a harsh light on the softly, softly approach of police throughout. This can\u2019t help but be front of mind for police communications staff.<\/p>\n More to the point, they\u2019re as bound by the injunction, which has now been extended to September 18, as we are. But as du Plessis-Allan suggests, with each passing day the rumour feels more solid, and the injunction more feeble. Into the void, speculation rises. Even Mark Mitchell\u2019s statement that Phillips was \u201ca monster\u201d can be read as a nod at something darker than has currently been reported.<\/p>\n That is in no small part due to social media, which our authorities appear to have all but acknowledged as being wholly ungovernable for a state of our size and power. That remains a stain on our sovereignty, one with consequences ranging from endemic scam advertisements<\/a> involving public figures from the prime minister on down<\/a>, to a fast-eroding tax base<\/a> due to the tech giants\u2019 epic profit shifting<\/a>.<\/p>\n But in this instance, our institutions have to wear some share of the blame too. Starting with the Gayford case, they established a precedent for making comment when they considered rumours to be sufficiently widespread and dangerous. It made sense at the time, and did have the effect of cauterising that lengthy period of wild speculation. Yet it and future denials unavoidably created an expectation that authorities would step in when speculation reached a sufficient volume.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t seem to imagine a future situation when such rumours might be true, while still needing to be kept from the public eye. Even if that turns out not to be the case in this instance \u2013 and we may never know either way \u2013 it will be some day. At least until social media companies are made as responsible for what they publish and distribute as other media have always been.<\/p>\n Due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter, the comments function has been disabled on this post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Responding to intense speculation spreading on unregulated social media platforms in the past has put authorities in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8133,42,359,1073,43,24602,1414,12244,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-23954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-analysis","tag-headlines","tag-internet","tag-media","tag-news","tag-rumours","tag-social-media","tag-tom-phillips","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Police minister Mark Mitchell and police commissioner Richard Chambers during a press conference after the police shooting of Tom Phillips (Photo: Dean Purcell\/New Zealand Herald via Getty Images
\nWhy haven\u2019t we been told?<\/p>\n