Guilty Minds

21

We gathered around the mahogany table. Gideon sat at the head.

“We are well and truly screwed,” he said. “Has it been picked up by any other websites yet?”

I shook my head.

“Give it a couple of minutes,” Dorothy said.

“I’m sorry about this,” I said. “I really thought we’d have killed this thing by now.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” said Gideon. “This was always a Hail Mary pass.”

“We’re not done yet,” I said.

Gideon looked at me, tilting his head. “What the hell are you talking about? It’s out there now, Heller.”

“Lots of things are out there on the Internet. Websites about how reptile extraterrestrials are running the US government.”

He shook his head, as if in disgust, his eyes closed. “The world has changed since the Kennedy administration. Back then, everybody knew that Jack Kennedy had a parade of women coming through the White House. But not a word of it ever made the papers. Now, anything and everything does. Absolute rubbish gets reported on the basis of nothing more than rumor.”

“Not true,” I said. “It’s just gotten a lot more complicated.”

“If someone snapped a picture of the president with a hooker today, it would be online in minutes.”

“Sure. There’s always some website that’ll publish anything. But the Claflin story hasn’t been picked up by the mainstream media yet. Meaning it hasn’t been validated. That usually takes a while.”

Gideon tilted his head like a Jack Russell Terrier listening to his master’s voice. “I hope you’re right. Go on.”

“You see, right now it exists only on the Internet. As long as it stays an Internet-only story — Slander Sheet, Gawker, TMZ, Drudge, Vice, whatever — it’s just gossip. It’s not news. It doesn’t become permanent until it’s validated by the old ‘legacy’ media. The mainstream media. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. The NBC evening news, NPR, CNN. At that point it’s written in ink. It’s permanent.”

“And when does that happen?”

“You probably know better than me. I don’t know the exact timing. Doesn’t the Times have a morning news meeting or whatever?”

Gideon looked at his watch. “At ten o’clock this morning, The New York Times has their front-page meeting.”

“There you go. Someone’s going to mention the rumor about Claflin and a call girl. They’re not going to ignore it.”

“No, probably not.”

“Who runs the meeting? There’s always one person. It’s not a democracy.”

“The executive editor. I’ve met him.”

“Okay, so the editor’s going to ask, ‘Who else is running with it?’ What they really want to know is, Is anybody else in the mainstream media covering it? Any of the other big dogs? But it’s not going to be any of them. Not this fast. Not in two and a half hours.”

“But this thing’s going to spread like gonorrhea.”

“No doubt. It’ll be picked up first by BuzzFeed or Drudge or TMZ. But that’s not enough to push it over the line into the mainstream. So maybe the Times assigns a couple of reporters to poke around the Slander Sheet story, see if there’s any solid evidence there.”

“But it’s also going to be picked up by some of the more respectable websites like Politico and Roll Call.”

“Maybe. But not the big dogs. Not yet. Does The New York Times have another front-page meeting today?”

“At four-thirty.”

“That’s the one we have to worry about. Four-thirty. Enough time will have gone by that they can at least do a piece about the reaction to this rumor.”

“You’re right. Four-thirty.”

“That’s nine hours from now. Not much time.” I got to my feet. “So what are we doing, sitting here, talking? Dorothy, come on. We’ve got work to do.”