Atlanta courthouse shooting coverage reminds us:
you can't fake sincerity

On HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday night, Mr. Smarty declared that the day's news coverage of the Atlanta courthouse shooting was excessive, and that the cable news networks should have been covering all the other stuff going on in the world.

Okay, Bill: The most action-packed crime in recent memory takes place a few blocks from CNN headquarters and only becomes more adventure-filled as the hours go by … and you expect the cable networks to give equal time to Syria? Not going to happen, dude!

By last night, finally, the story seemed to be winding down. Before turnout out the lights, I turned on CNN to see some mop-up coverage. I picked up Larry King Live about 40 minutes into the show. That always-enraged nutty lawyer woman who fills in for him—I refuse to do the finger-lift that would be necessary to Google her name—was interviewing a number of witnesses and other officials involved in the courthouse shooting story.

Pulling a kind of Reverse Oprah maneuver, this terrible woman was asking questions that were obviously designed to make her cry in the asking! She broke herself up at least twice with her own questions.

Thinking to myself that I'd seen the last of any sincere conversation about this story, I got ready to snap off the set and pull up the covers. Then, I saw a half-hour of straight testimony by Ashley Smith, the woman made a hostage of by the man on the lam, Brian Nichols. Read the transcript.

Unlike Reverse Oprah, Smith told her story with obvious devotion to truth and an intention to communicate reality of the situation, rather than the imagined noble sentiment. Her testimony was incredible—an amazing story, impossible to tune out, stimulating on emotional and intellectual levels.

I found myself reeling in my own admiration for this person, as I'm sure every other watcher did.

It's too much to hope for that Smith won't be immediately interviewed to death by Reverse Oprah and every other kind of Oprah—including Oprah. These Oprahs are able to turn the most honest people into bullshitters and sentimental fools. After all, they turned 9/11 from a traumatic event that all Americans shared into a member of the Hallmark Hall of Famer that many Americans now deny the importance of.

I'm sure the Oprahs can handle Ashley Smith.

There's an old expression: If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made. That expression was meant to be funny. Remember?

Some of us do, and some of us don't.

All professional communicators should.