Clickbait, Ted Bundy and the Launch of the Disinformation Superhighway

“The lowest form of popular culture — lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives — has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”

— Carl Bernstein

This year, we officially launched the disinformation superhighway.

It’s been building for a while, of course. Websites like Snopes and Politifact wouldn’t have been viable if there weren’t enough lies being published on a daily basis to defuse.

Of course, this is nothing new. In 2016, we were engaged by an epic onslaught of “fake news” Web sites that, we now understand, transmogrified the Internet from a repository of the sum total of human knowledge into a murky swamp of muck mired in bovine butt bombs. It ended the age of truthiness, while it simultaneously ushered in the era of alternative facts.

But, this isn’t about politics or even political reporting. Today’s entree of cow patties was foreshadowed by decades upon decades of tabloid trash that served as the bridge to the Internet’s clickbait blitz.

Perhaps the favorite formula used by these sites is the list story, a piece which promises anywhere between 10 and 20 factoids you “never knew” about a particular topic. These articles almost always promise to “surprise,” “stun,” or otherwise “shock” readers with the revealing of big secrets that NO ONE KNEW until they paid some hack from Craigslist $50 to make them up.

This week, the invasion of the supremely stupid got personal, as I was treated to a two-year-old story on my Facebook feed called “15 Shocking Things You Didn’t Know About Ted Bundy.” We’re coming up on the 30th anniversary of the infamous serial killer’s execution in Florida’s electric chair in 2019, so the article has started making the rounds again. (No, I won’t promote the site here, but if you’re curious, Google has you covered.)

The problem is, the opening of the article is dreadfully wrong, and I know, because I was there. I watched Ted Bundy die in the electric chair.

In 1989, I was a crime beat journalist for a Hearst daily newspaper called The Clearwater Sun. At the tender age of 23, I had already been working at the paper for four years. I started as an intern writing obituaries and movie times in 1985 while I was studying journalism at USF, and was quickly assigned the night cops beat after one of our city room reporters got promoted and another one got fired.

Back in those days, the Florida Press Club had an agreement with the state’s corrections department when executions were scheduled. The media were allowed a handful of seats to watch executions through a large glass window, and the Press Club traditionally drew names of news organizations out of a hat, leaving the assignment editors to pick who would represent them.

Hearst was chosen, and now four years into my career as a professional journalist, and Aristotelian confluence of circumstances saw me as the senior man in the city room. I was as surprised as anyone to get the nod from my editor, Dave Pero, so off I went.

The first thing this article says, pretty much right out of the gate, was made up by someone who must have just finished binge watching Jail Break.

“And on January 24th of 1989, guards had to forcibly drag the quaking, sobbing, hysterical killer into the room to meet Old Sparky, Florida’s electric chair.”

Not even close. The guards held Bundy under his arms and almost carried him into the execution chamber because his hands and feet were tightly manacled, so he could not really walk. Moreover, Bundy was far from hysterical. The following is how it really happened, from my story which circulated to 200 newspapers via the Hearst Newswire:

Bundy’s eyes were marbles of emptiness, yet they said everything for him. They darted around the room, not focusing on anyone. When his eyes locked with attorney Coleman’s gaze, the one time law student nodded as a lawyer might nod to another lawyer, acknowledging defeat.

His expression seemed empty, his motions without meaning. He had accepted his fate long ago.

His only words were to Coleman and Lawrence. ‘’Jim, Fred. I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends,’’ Bundy said.

This was not the Ted Bundy the media had known for 10 years. He was no longer the braggart, the outraged innocent. He had lost control. Before this week, he still had all the answers and knew what everyone else wanted to know. He could utter a stray word, and law enforcement officials desperate to solve murders would spend a week interpreting.

He took his last trick when he began confessing his crimes to investigators from around the country. He took the trick, and it backfired. He lost the upper hand.

And so he sat, complacent, while officers strapped him down. His eyes darted faster just before the black veil that would cover his face was added to the chair’s headpiece.

Next, the article offered this sensationalistic nonsense.

“Electrical current surged through his body for a minute, ending with a puff of smoke drifting up from his right thigh. And it was over. It was said he died with a smile on his face.”

Complete garbage. There was no smoke, and no smile. Again, here’s the truth from my story:

At 7:06, a circuit breaker clanked, and the jolt hit Bundy. He straightened up in the chair, clenching his fists. It would be the last move he would ever make. At 7:08, the circuit was broken, and Bundy’s fists relaxed, but did not unclench.

One of two doctors inside the chamber waited several minutes, then unstrapped Bundy’s chest restraint and unbuttoned his shirt. After checking for a heartbeat, he called a second doctor. He lifted the veil and looked at Bundy’s pupils. For about two seconds I saw Bundy’s eyes staring straight ahead. They were half-closed and he wore what looked like an astonished grimace.

And this is how fake news works. They take enough factual information from reality — such as the minute-long electrical charge and the guards carrying him into the room — and then they add utter fabrications to punch up the narrative so it matches the drivel that’s shown on reality television and lower-rung premium cable channels.

The result is many thousands, and even millions, of people read it, and then accept it as gospel. We see so much of it, we’ve become numb to it and have simply evolved into accepting everything we see online with a grain of salt the size of Wyoming. We stop believing that anyone is telling the truth, and that we are helpless to fight the gigantic media conspiracy to hide the truth from us.

The real truth is this — click-throughs generate revenue which pads the pockets of the con-men who run these sites. The media is not smart enough, organized enough or cooperative enough to pull off any kind of conspiracy. I’ve worked in it long enough to know that most senior managers spend their time lurching from crisis to crisis, trying to stem the tide of commoditization that has seen the ranks of media professionals shrink by half over the last decade. They are competing tooth and nail for every last penny of revenue, so even if you put the heads of Viacom, Comcast, Warners, Disney and NBC/Universal in a room together, they wouldn’t be able to agree on what to order for lunch, let alone conspire to do anything.

But there are a few of us left who remember what real journalism looks like, and we have hope that the people will stop clicking on these headlines and demand a real media industry to rise again.

But I’m not holding my breath.

(Tony Panaccio received The 1989 Florida Press Club Award for his coverage of Ted Bundy’s execution. His experience covering the story, along with the experience of former Tampa Bay area news anchor John Wilson, is being developed into a motion picture. Panaccio is currently a senior counselor with Wilson Media in St. Petersburg, Florida.)