Before you get outraged and share that post on your social media profile.

nly two things mat­ter: the sal­va­tion of the soul, and truth. That is why it is an offense to see so many posts run­ning the rounds of social media that are full of bla­tant untruths that could be dis­cov­ered by a small amount of fact-check­ing. The head­line, or the meme, screams at us. “Pope Fran­cis says yada yada yada!” we are told; when, in fact, the pope has said noth­ing like yada yada yada. “Oba­ma’s out­ra­geous words!” anoth­er post screams; when, in fact, Oba­ma did­n’t say it and what he did say was a big yawn­ing bore of a cliché.

Very often, what the pope, or the pres­i­dent, or who­ev­er, did say is right there in the arti­cle; the head­line is a lie. But who reads the arti­cle? Who has time? You read the head­line, you hit the share but­ton, you write: “Hor­ri­ble! Egre­gious! Pre­pos­ter­ous! Who does he think he is?” and you move on to the next piece of man­u­fac­tured out­rage in your news feed.

It mat­ters very much:

These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, sev­en are an abom­i­na­tion unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed inno­cent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imag­i­na­tions, feet that be swift in run­ning to mis­chief, a false wit­ness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth dis­cord among brethren.

Truth mat­ters so much—for God is truth, so an offense against truth is an offense against God himself—that Solomon warns us two times not to lie. Lying is such an abom­i­na­tion to God that it counts as two of sev­en abom­i­na­tions. These six things doth the Lord hate—well, in fact, he hates sev­en when you count lying twice.

There is anoth­er rea­son why this is such an impor­tant point, and it has to do with the very first item on my list: the sal­va­tion of souls. To lie—to spread false report—puts your soul in per­il, as the Cat­e­chism tells us:

False wit­ness and per­jury. When you make it pub­licly, a state­ment con­trary to the truth takes on a par­tic­u­lar grav­i­ty. In court it becomes false wit­ness. When it is under oath, it is per­jury. Acts such as these con­tribute to con­dem­na­tion of the inno­cent, exon­er­a­tion of the guilty, or the increased pun­ish­ment of the accused. They grave­ly com­pro­mise the exer­cise of jus­tice and the fair­ness of judi­cial deci­sions.

Respect for the rep­u­ta­tion of per­sons for­bids every atti­tude and word like­ly to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty

of rash judg­ment who, even tac­it­ly, assumes as true, with­out suf­fi­cient foun­da­tion, the moral fault of a neigh­bor;

of detrac­tion who, with­out objec­tive­ly valid rea­son, dis­clos­es anoth­er’s faults and fail­ings to per­sons who did not know them;

of calum­ny who, by remarks con­trary to the truth, harms the rep­u­ta­tion of oth­ers and gives occa­sion for false judg­ments con­cern­ing them.

To avoid rash judg­ment, every­one should be care­ful to inter­pret inso­far as pos­si­ble his neigh­bor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favor­able way. …

Detrac­tion and calum­ny destroy the rep­u­ta­tion and hon­or of one’s neigh­bor. Hon­or is the social wit­ness giv­en to human dig­ni­ty, and every­one enjoys a nat­ur­al right to the hon­or of his name and rep­u­ta­tion and to respect. Thus, detrac­tion and calum­ny offend against the virtues of jus­tice and char­i­ty.” (CCC 2476–2479)

Yes, it mat­ters. It mat­ters because detrac­tion and judg­ment and calumny—against the pope, against Oba­ma, against whoever—is a mor­tal sin.

To give an exam­ple of this. A sto­ry has been mak­ing the rounds on Face­book late­ly (here is one incar­na­tion of it, at Tea Par­ty Cru­saders, writ­ten under a pseu­do­nym), which claims that Michelle Oba­ma said, “Amer­i­ca is unfair to me.” [This site has since been deleted.—SEA, 8/15/19.] Watch the video! says the head­line. When Mrs. Oba­ma says these words—so we are told—the crowd’s response is “EPIC”!

Now, a head­line like that makes you think that Mrs. Oba­ma said, “Amer­i­ca is unfair to me,” and that the crowd respond­ed with tremen­dous dis­fa­vor and well-deserved boo­ing. The only prob­lem is—watch the video and see—the crowd gave no “epic” response of any kind, pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive. Not only that, but Mrs. Oba­ma did not say “Amer­i­ca is unfair to me.”

The con­text was a com­mence­ment address at Tuskegee; and in the CNN clip pro­vid­ed by TPC, Mrs. Oba­ma did note some stereo­typ­i­cal words and car­toons aimed in her direc­tion dur­ing the 2008 campaign—such as this one in the New York­er. But for Mrs. Oba­ma to note such things hard­ly amounts to “Amer­i­ca is unfair to me,” even if those words were intend­ed to be a para­phrase of what she said. (Inci­den­tal­ly, if it’s a para­phrase, you’re not sup­posed to put it in quo­ta­tion marks.) It was­n’t “Amer­i­ca” who pub­lished that car­toon, it was the New York­er—a lib­er­al mag­a­zine.

More­over, the whole con­text of Mrs. Oba­ma’s remarks had noth­ing to do with unfair­ness, but with “pres­sure to meet the expec­ta­tions of oth­ers.” She used her own expe­ri­ence dur­ing the 2008 cam­paign to illus­trate, and then gave this impor­tant foot­note: “Those same ques­tions would have been asked of any can­di­date’s spouse; that’s just the way the process works.” So nei­ther was she claim­ing some spe­cial “pres­sure” unique to her­self as a black woman. She was talk­ing about the kind of thing that is com­mon to all peo­ple.

In oth­er words, the head­line is a lie. And by spread­ing it on social media, with­out both­er­ing to check it out, peo­ple become com­plic­it in a lie even if it is not what they intend.

Here is a sec­ond exam­ple. A meme about Joe Biden has also been mak­ing the rounds of Face­book in recent days. As near as I can tell, the ori­gin of the meme was this post at Bre­it­bart, which attrib­ut­es to Joe Biden the belief that “No ordi­nary Amer­i­can cares about their [sic] Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.” The meme quotes those words as though they came direct from the mouth of Biden him­self. It adds a cap­tion: “Yes, Amer­i­ca, our Vice Pres­i­dent said that.”

But no. He did not. Watch the video at Bre­it­bart. Here is what Mr. Biden actu­al­ly said: “No law-abid­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zen has any fear that their Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are going to be infringed in any way.” It might be a ques­tion­able claim, but it is noth­ing at all like say­ing that Amer­i­cans don’t even care about their Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and so we can take them away any time we like.

In oth­er words, the head­line, and the meme, are a lie. And by spread­ing it on social media, with­out both­er­ing to check it out—merely trust­ing it because it popped up in the news feed and it suits their neg­a­tive opin­ion of Mr. Biden—people become unwit­ting­ly, and lazi­ly, com­plic­it in a lie even if it is not what they intend.

There are scores and scores of things that Mr. Biden and Mrs. Oba­ma say that can and should be crit­i­cized. But they should be crit­i­cized for what they did say and did mean—not for made-up out­rage that is no more than red meat for a polit­i­cal base. Let’s be clear: What we are talk­ing about here is calum­ny.

 

So here is what you can do to put a stop to all of it.

• Read the sto­ry before you share it.

The post often con­tains the truth about which the head­line has lied. The rea­son, I sus­pect, that Web sites do this is twofold: (1) to pro­vide click­bait or share­bait; (2) to spread a false nar­ra­tive to a pub­lic, or base, that by and large, reads only the head­line before going on to the next item. If the head­line is a lie, don’t share the sto­ry. Or if you must share it, point out that it is a lie and cor­rect the record.

• Google it.

Every now and then, I see a meme pop up in my news feed which attrib­ut­es the fol­low­ing syn­tax-chal­lenged words to Oba­ma advis­er Valerie Jar­rett: “I am a[n] Iran­ian by birth and of my Islam­ic faith. I am also an Amer­i­can [c]itizen and I seek to help Amer­i­ca become a more Islam­ic coun­try. My faith guides me and I feel like it is going well in the tran­si­tion of using free­dom of reli­gion in Amer­i­ca against itself.” Ms. Jar­rett, the meme claims, wrote that illit­er­ate trash in 1977 when she was at Stan­ford.

One prob­lem: I can’t find any evi­dence that Ms. Jar­rett ever said any­thing of the kind. The only source I can find for the quo­ta­tion is the very meme that’s in ques­tion in the first place, and those blogs that repeat it with­out any sourc­ing of any kind.

If you can’t ver­i­fy that Ms. Jar­rett said it, don’t share it.

• Check the date.

You might be sur­prised how often old news sto­ries pop up on Face­book. In some cas­es there might be a rea­son to share an old post, par­tic­u­lar­ly if it’s not time-spe­cif­ic. But fre­quent­ly the post in ques­tion will be a news item, and yet it’s shared as though it’s some new thing that just now hap­pened. Some­times I even see a post wish­ing “RIP” to a celebri­ty who died sev­er­al years ago.

“OMG, did you know that Ernest Borg­nine died?”

“Sure. That was in 2012.”

In oth­er cas­es, lat­er devel­op­ments change the orig­i­nal sto­ry. A week or so ago, I saw a post about manda­to­ry ster­il­iza­tions that were tak­ing place in Cal­i­for­nia pris­ons. The arti­cle was pub­lished on June 20, 2014. Sev­er­al months lat­er, accord­ing to this sto­ry at the Wash­ing­ton Post, Gov. Brown signed leg­is­la­tion ban­ning forced ster­il­iza­tions, but per­mit­ting vol­un­tary ones.

Always check the date.

• Check whether it’s a satire or fake news site.

Some satire sites I like very much, such as Eye of the Tiber. But I share those arti­cles with the under­stand­ing that it’s satire. Too many times fake stories—particularly those that invite outrage—get passed around as though they were gen­uine. Such was the case with a sto­ry that claimed that, under Com­mon Core, an ele­men­tary school teacher in Jack­sonville demon­strat­ed to her class how to use a strap-on dil­do. The les­son actu­al­ly did hap­pen, but the stu­dents were enrolled at Brock Uni­ver­si­ty in Ontario, and they were vol­un­tar­i­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Gay Pride event, and it had noth­ing to do with Com­mon Core.

If the sto­ry sounds too out­ra­geous to be true, it prob­a­bly is. Don’t be a dupe of fake news sites.

• Nev­er trust the words “Pope Fran­cis says”.

Nev­er, nev­er, nev­er. Always check it out.

• Keep tabs on offend­ing Web sites.

I have my own list of sites that I know are always to be approached with a skep­tic’s eye, what­ev­er the top­ic. I don’t share sto­ries from those sites except for good rea­son; and in the few cas­es I do, I always write an intro­duc­to­ry remark of my own.

• Read the Cat­e­chism on sins against the sixth com­mand­ment.

Read it again and again and again. Read it as often as it takes for the point to sink in. The sins against the sixth com­mand­ment, on blogs whose pur­pose is to defame the pope or Catholic prelates, are ram­pant and shame­ful. The sacra­ment of Con­fes­sion exists for a rea­son.

• If you make a mis­take and a false sto­ry slips through your radar.

Well, it hap­pens. We’re all human. I’ve done it too. But make a cor­rec­tion, or take the post down, as soon as you find out.

•••

The most like­ly neg­a­tive response to all of the above will be to say: But I don’t have time for all this home­work and fact check­ing. I have a busy life.

Well, my only response to that is this: Don’t share the sto­ry at all. Instead, spend your time on Face­book shar­ing pic­tures of cats.

I wish I could say that the media is always trust­wor­thy and we can believe their every sto­ry. But if there were ever a time when that was true, it is true no more. And with main­stream out­lets no longer will­ing, as it seems, to get even so much as the head­line right—and with an ever-grow­ing pro­lif­er­a­tion of blogs and Web sites with no fact check­er or edi­tor of any kind—it is impor­tant for us to be our own fact-check­ers and hold the media, and our­selves, account­able to the truth.

If you have a Face­book page, or Twit­ter account, or any social media plat­form, then you are a pub­lish­er. You are respon­si­ble for the truth of what goes on your pro­file. It is your moral oblig­a­tion to ver­i­fy the facts. To say, “I don’t have time for that,” is no dif­fer­ent than to say, “I don’t have time for the truth.” If you just post the meme, or the sto­ry, with­out any check­ing of the facts, and it hap­pens to be false, then you are allow­ing your­self to be com­plic­it in calum­ny.

There is a final point to all of this, which is to call out and reform the media—or, at least, to try. That will not hap­pen overnight. But the less often we share false sto­ries (or the more often we share them with the express pur­pose of call­ing out the lies), the more the media will real­ize that their click­bait, share­bait, out­rage-bait strate­gies have a neg­a­tive effect; and they will stop. But first we need to stop being pawns in some­one else’s agen­da. Truth mat­ters, and there­fore we must make it mat­ter.