HEROES AND/OR VILLAINS?

There You Go Again, Folks, Shooting The Messenger

It always surprises me when I see the "shoot the messenger" reaction
to bad news. It shouldn't, I know. After 12 years in the news
business, I've taken my share of bullets (so to speak).

But there I was, feeling shocked (shocked!) that readers were
incensed with the Toronto Sun and other newspapers for revealing that
Air Transat pilot Robert Piche spent nearly two years in U.S. jails
for drug trafficking in the 1980s. Apparently, his Piper Aztec
turboprop plane was found containing 53 bales of pot (not for
medicinal purposes, I presume).

You'll know Piche better as the guy who safely landed a plane
carrying 304 people after the engines cut out over the Atlantic
Ocean. For that, Piche was dubbed a hero - and rightly so. By all
accounts, the landing was no easy task. But he succeeded. So on Aug.
25, instead of reading about another Swissair-type disaster, we read
of Piche's heroism.

And less than a week later, we read of his less heroic earlier flying
exploits, the aforementioned non-medicinal marijuana running. But
instead of discussing the complexities of everyday heroes who have
colourful pasts, as distinct from fictional heroes who don't, we end
up discussing, in the words of an Air Transat spokesperson, whether
"ethics should have led the media to maybe be more sober" about
Piche's past.

Ah, yes, media ethics: a favorite thing-that-doesn't-exist that we
love to criticize. (Second only to God; ever notice how many people
say they don't believe in God while railing about God's inefficiency
and ineptitude? But I digress.) In this case, did media ethics call
for burying the drug story?

Defining the Role

No. You'd expect a journalist to say that, right? Okay, you do the
logic. How you answer depends on what you define as the role of the
media. Is our role to make people feel good - about their world,
their purchases, their jobs, their elected representatives or the
heroes they encounter? If yes, then simply log onto PR Is Us, or its
real-life equivalent. What you want is a steady diet of press
releases - those things designed to pump you up about whatever
they're promoting.

News is a different thing. And the job of the news media is, among
other things, to tell the truth. That's not truth with a capital "T,"
as if there was one all-purpose interpretation of every event or
issue, but rather lower case truth, as in "this is what we know to be
accurate at this moment in time."

And what we know to be accurate as of a few days ago is that Robert
Piche is both a convicted drug runner and a hero who saved 304
people. Does one cancel out the other? That bit of truth is for
readers to decide - the media is just the messenger of the details.

And decide they did. Seemingly without variation, people are
defending Piche. What's done is done, he did his time, he's a hero
today, seems to be the prevailing sentiment. True enough, but heroism
today doesn't erase a criminal past, nor does a criminal past predict
a criminal future. People are more complex than that.

And the reaction to stories like this shows me we're learning that
lesson (which is one more reason to tell these stories in the first
place). At least people aren't attempting to devalue Piche's heroism
because of a mistake nearly 20 years ago.

And that proves we've matured beyond the Hollywood movie Hero - you
know, the one where a crusty con-man played by Dustin Hoffman rescues
people from a burning aircraft that lands on his car, but someone
else takes the credit and reward. The other guy turns out to be a
much nicer hero - he gives some reward money to charity, visits sick
kids, makes motivational speeches. So in the end everyone agrees to
keep up the charade, assuming the public would prefer the nicer hero.

The support for Piche proves we don't need the charade. You're a
hero, Robert. And a convicted, later pardoned, drug runner. Both. Not
either or. And there's nothing unethical about telling both stories.