PROVE YOUR WORTH BY SAYING NO TO HEARSAY

This evening, someone inboxed me asking me about whether one of my workmates is involved in sex orgies! My attention was swiftly captured and it was held down the more when someone I have come to know over the past 16 months was named. Salma co-host on the request show, UREquest as well as Livewire.

The person was asking me whether Salma is a university dropout engaging in group sex for monetary gain as claimed by the now famous on-and-off corny Ugandan version of Gossip Girl. A Facebook page claiming to be exposing the ills of society in Kampala and Uganda.

It is only human for curiosity to get the best of any soul pushing it to seek to know more. But as a journalist, I have grown to learn to sieve whatever information is thrown my way treating it suspect until confirmed as true. But that is just me. For most of the gossip hungry handful of likes on this page, they have handed over that ability to not just swallow whatever information is thrown their way to a character most of them if not all don’t know!

And today, this vending machine ‘exposed’ Salma as part of a clan of sex hounds who engage in IT in multitudes. Shocking! Right?

While this is not a launch of a rebuttal to the works of the said page, allow me to do something you are mostly not to see Sal or any of those people the blast names do because to them it is too ridiculous to handle let alone react to. Salma is a professional banker with a passion for media which explains her being on radio. Bet our gossip girl doesn’t know that just like many of his/her disciples. I don’t subscribe to the page but a look at the post, it claims she is a university dropout.

Now, I know very few banks that employ dropouts. If any. Forget the cliche stories. I want one of the over a hundred respondents to prove me wrong on this.

If we are to summarily be part of the crowd that throws the stones, let’s be sure we don’t end up being the clowns. The respondents to this minute are going on about how ‘campus girls’ have become a menace. Maybe they have but if I am to single out Salma who was clearly the hinge of the post, she does not fall under that category.

Also, if we are to nail her for being the disgrace many have called her, let’s be sure our facts are backed with evidence. Let us not allow to be taken for a ride on an assumed road of morality knocking down victims we even barely know.

As we enjoy this utter level of defaming madness and even ask for more, at least let us do it the right way. A banker cannot be a school dropout. Maybe she could but what proof backs that?

Now he who has no blemish, cast the stones. But you see, those stones don’t die. Someone might just pick them up some day and redirect them to you.

Someone might be accusing me of being against the art of exposing the ills but well, before you pick up the stone, I do that for a living. Only in a way that is not out to defame but deliver truthful sides to the story with objectivity.

Say no to being naive. To being the person who swallows and regurgitates whatever piece of information fictitious or defamatory thrown your way. While you go on running around with what yo think you know, someone is looking at you and wondering, ‘who are these people?’

This is not to wean anyone off any page let alone call for it to be pulled down. Those keep sprouting but it is us whose mindset has to be aware not to fall victim to the ‘scammers’. The source of your information says A LOT about you.

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