Ted Failon's Pyrrhic Victory...

.:NBI Investigation Reveals: Trina Etong Committed Suicide:.

Finally, it can be confirmed that Ted Failon did not attempt to kill his wife. The investigation was very clear and though this is not cause for joy but merely relief, I’m sure that Ted Failon must be feeling significantly better now that he is not being suspected, at times even accused, of having killed his wife.

I write about this story because I personally find it to be a very important lesson to people who enjoy doing nothing more than speculating and bandwagoning. The sheer number of armchair CSI specialists who turned up in Plurk and on the blogosphere alike was ridiculous, and I hope all of those insensitive souls who were quick to assume the worst out of Mr. Failon are eating crow right now.

I don’t have much to add when it comes to the NBI findings, really. I just feel that this moment is a victory, albeit a pyrrhic one for Mr. Failon. I would never know if the man is a saint or whatnot. I don’t know him personally. But when people started to go on a witch-hunt and when they decided for themselves that watching CSI on TV was going to be enough education for them to bypass due process, I was admittedly disturbed by the trend I saw. Just a year or two ago, I left this kind of sensationalism up to anonymouse bloggers or Brian Gorell, but now, I see so much sensationalism in blogs and Plurks alike, I find it difficult to tell them apart from seedy tabloids.

So to the people who went ahead and accused Mr. Failon of being his wife’s killer, are you decent enough to offer an apology to him, even if he may never read it? We bloggers keep on talking about our power and our ability to voice out what we think, but are we responsible with what we write or say? Or is libel just the standard operating procedure in cyberspace?

I could’ve sworn that wasn’t the blogosphere I spent almost seven years in all this time. When did it all take a turn for the worse? When did bloggers get so full of themselves that they think the rules of decency and propriety no longer apply to them?

If I didn’t make it clear enough, to the people, be they bloggers, politicians, plurkers, or whomever else who accused Ted Failon of killing his wife, to those who aggrandized themselves by thinking they’re some wonderful forensic experts despite not having set one foot in the “crime” scene, shame on you.

Shame on you for milking your traffic with theories about why he acted the way he did despite being a journalist. The next time your wife gets shot in the head and you’re going out of your mind trying to save her life, I hope you’d know exactly what to do and not let a single ounce of emotion get in the way.

Shame on you for accusing an innocent man of wrongdoing for no other reason than it sounds sensational and it “seems” to make all the sense in the world.

Shame on you for being insensitive to a man who just suffered a tragedy.

And shame on you for not understanding the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”.