IT was one of the defining images of #metoo. A woman, we were told, had been gagged and bound to a chair because she had spoken up against men.
And there was, it was said, a picture to prove it.
The story of DeeAnn Fitzpatrick – the fisheries official whose photograph shocked the world – broke at the height of a global social media awakening about misogyny and sexual harassment.
It ended, effectively, this week when an employment judge declared Ms Fitzpatrick to be “dishonest” and rejected her bid for £500,000.
She had earlier been sacked for making false statements, including to journalists.
The former civil servant had, we now know, lied about when the picture was taken and why.
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This had not been an attempt to silence a female whistleblower, it had been one of what the judge called a number of “puerile pranks” indulged at an office of Marine Scotland in Scrabster, near Thurso.
Ms Fitzpatrick had claimed the image showed retribution for a 2010 complaint she had made. In fact, as this paper revealed two years ago, forensic checks proved the picture was from 2009.
This has been a sorry saga. It is also one where there seems little to be gained by throwing around blame and anger, including at Ms Fitzpatrick, some of whose grievances are not entirely without foundation.
Yet “chairgate” – as some call this episode – could be a learning opportunity, or should be. Marine Scotland, the government’s fisheries agency, will want to reflect on the culture in its Scrabster office, described, by the judge, as “dysfunctional”.
The gagging and taping may have been a practical joke – apparently this was what happened to staff who fell asleep at work – but it was, to quote the judge again, “beyond the bounds’, even “sinister”.
But I think this case is also a teaching moment on how we can come to believe things that are, bluntly, false.
That is because “chairgate” had all the ingredients needed for a misinformation or disinformation event.
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Above all, it was a story that, for some, was too good not to be true, a “case study” which spoke to what for many was a greater, deeper truth about how men treat women.
For many of us, #metoo was powerful and challenging. It made us face up to a difficult reality. But not every story flushed out of a Twitter trend was going to be entirely true and straightforward: life is just not like that; truth can be messy. We humans like simple, emotive tales of goodies and baddies. And ‘chairgate’ gave us that, until hard evidence and due process shattered the narrative.
The Scrabster allegations were not without victims. The wife of one of the men sucked in to the scandal wrote to the First Minister describing a “living hell” of abuse and harassment for her family.
So what are the lessons of the now debunked chair story? Well, first, that we should interrogate any piece of news which evokes a strong emotional response. Some people who wish to mislead you will go for your heart, not your head. Just because something ‘feels’ right does not mean that it ‘is’ right.
Second, we have to be particularly wary of how still and moving images are “framed”, about believing what we are told they show.
The camera, it used to be said, never lies. In Ms Fitzpatrick’s case that was sort of true – it was the data included in a digital image which undermined her central claim. But there is a bigger point here. A single snap – or even a short video – does not necessarily tell a whole story, often deliberately so.
READ MORE: Judge throws out gagging claim
Social media in particular is a sea of images which misrepresent events.
Think of the viral video which made it look like Trump-supporting schoolboys were in confrontation with some native Americans. A different perspective revealed they were not. But not before they got death threats.
Third, we need to be aware of the consequences of legitimate government or corporate secrecy. Lots of the kind of stories which fuel culture war narratives – such as “chairgate” or recent controversies round religious symbols at work or gay adoption – involve how the state or companies interact with people.
Public and private officials will often be unable to comment, legally. Their silence can create a space that is filled by partial or misleading information. But the fact a state agency or firm has not given its side of a story does not mean that side does not exist. Sometimes we should be more patient before reaching conclusions.
Fourth, and finally, we have to be particularly careful about stories which become politicised, as the mess in Scrabster has. A politician, Labour’s Rhoda Grant, took up Ms Fitzpatrick’s cause at the very outset and has been a passionate and persistent advocate for the former civil servant ever since.
There is nothing improper in MSPs championing constituents. Ms Grant insists that Ms Fitzpatrick is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. She is yet to articulate – at any length or any depth – why she feels comfortable making this tremendously serious charge.
Our politics can be stupid and tribalistic. This creates a risk of partisans believing things that are not true, with real consequences for real people.
There are Unionists who believe literally any old nonsense about the Scottish Government, even about its non-partisan civil servants. And there are Yessers who feel the same way about UK authorities.
To sum up, that chair picture really was defining, but of the dangers of disinformation, misinformation and partial information, not of #metoo.
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