There are few ideas journalism professors hammer into undergraduate heads more important than this: “don’t make assumptions.”
When you see a mistake in a newspaper, someone usually made a bad assumption. That’s not to say there aren’t other reasons errors pop up. Sometimes mental fatigue or rushing a story can lead to mistakes, but ‘assumption making’ is one of the most common. That’s why journalists ask a lot of stupid questions, like getting “Dave Smith” to spell his first and last name. With the way some parents spell their kids’ names these days, you just never know.
“Don’t make assumptions” isn’t just good advice for journalists, however. It’s a wise way to live your life, especially when dealing with controversies of the day. Take the recent Salvation Army fire, for example. The Prince Albert Fire Department hadn’t even left the scene before the hottest of hot takes started popping up online from some residents who seemed way more confident than they should be.
The fire wasn’t even 24 hours old when I read the following Facebook theories:
• it was intentionally started by gang members
• it was intentionally started by the homeless
• it was intentionally started by drug addicts
• it was intentionally started by homeless gang members who were high on drugs (editor’s note: *depressed sigh*)
• the Community Christmas Dinner volunteers left a stove on
• the Salvation Army operators did it to collect the insurance money
The authors of these takes submitted them with a level of confidence matched only by their lack of evidence. None of them (to my knowledge) came from reputable sources with insider information. As I said, Prince Albert firefighters were still dousing the building with water, although they should have saved some of it for Facebook where the metaphorical flames were almost as hot.
Since then, reputable sources, like the PAFD investigators, have been EXTREMELY reluctant to makes statements about what happened. When the Daily Herald contacted the Prince Albert Fire Department, deputy chief Alex Paul took great pains to highlight that their information was limited.
They weren’t commenting on who started the fire, or why. Those issues, Paul made clear, were for the police to determine. All they could say was that it was human started. They couldn’t even say if it was one person or several.
The following day, the Prince Albert Police Service announced that they were taking over the investigation. Part of that process involves determining whether or not the fire was a criminal act. Personally, I can’t imagine how starting a fire in a building you aren’t supposed to be in could NOT be considered a criminal act, but that’s me making an assumption. If my old journalism professors heard about this, they would understandably reach for the Rye.
So my advice in this situation is the same as with any police investigation: let the trained professionals do their job. Refrain from hopping on social media to make sweeping proclamations based on gut-feelings. If you have opinions, make sure they are informed opinions.
Don’t do or say anything that will make you look dumb months down the road, because there’s one assumption I do feel comfortable making: a few people who floated unconfirmed theories on their personal Facebook pages are going to look really dumb when the final report comes out … unless of course it really was a homeless gang member with a drug addiction who volunteered for the Community Christmas Dinner, then left a stove on to burn the place down so the Salvation Army could collect the insurance money. But if you think that, please contact me immediately. I have a beautiful piece of ocean-front property to sell you. It’s located right in downtown Moose Jaw. I’m sure you will love it.
Jason Kerr is the editor of the Prince Albert Daily Herald.
