Viral clip highlights the need for rules

The power to publish is now at everyone's fingertips...you can reach millions with a smartphone.

THE humiliation of a West Auckland woman, in the filming and posting of footage of two ex-boyfriends abusing her for cheating, is a horrible example of how enormously destructive unregulated "news" can be.

The video, with the tagline "Busted", inflicted tens of thousands of abusive comments on the woman, after it went viral on YouTube, according to the Herald on Sunday.

This is a terrible example of what can happen when people, inevitably small-minded, lack the intelligence or the maturity to foresee consequences.

Some would argue media publish or broadcast without considering the consequences, but this isn't so. A regulated press industry is capable of making judgements based on ethics, knowledge, experience and the public concern factor - and then go ahead and publish.

Now, that might not seem comforting at all. It might seem even more reprehensible to publish with a full appreciation of potential damage caused by the airing of the facts. Certainly, the Times-Age gets criticism for publishing things people do not want to be confronted with. But that is what regulated media is trained to consider.

Media people are trained to make judgments, assess the risks versus the righteous outcome, and know when to not get involved. But those two ex-boyfriends, likely motivated by what they thought was a righteous revenge, lacked that judgment. They may have thought they were right to castigate the woman, but they turned their own private affair into a public one.

The power to publish is now at everyone's fingertips. Twenty years ago you would have needed a film studio, a printing budget and a distribution network to get your message out there. Today, you can reach millions with a smartphone.

Wairarapa is not immune to cyber-pranks, as seen when Masterton's Wikipedia page was briefly altered for a personal attack on the mayoral candidates last week. It is useful we now have stronger cyber-bullying laws, and the Online Media Standards Authority, which has ruled on two cases since starting this year.

I anticipate they'll get busier.