A MASS com student once asked in class: When do you publish a rumor as news?

That’s as tricky as being asked: How do you beat your wife and call it self-defense?

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A rumor can see print but only if plainly labeled as rumor. It can’t be presented as news, only as a fact in the news, such as:

— A rumor that leads to a hair-pulling between two women at, say, the City Council session hall while the councilor-husband helplessly watches. The news is the women’s catfight, not the rumor that set it off.

— A rumor that the world will end tomorrow, inducing a mad rush for groceries, bottled water, and cell-phone prepaid cards. The news is the panic buying, with the rumor as cause of the panic.

But rumor can escalate into news, such as when a city councilor’s wife surprised him in the house of the other woman, a City Hall employee, and threw a pail at them.

The report reached the barangay captain and the acting mayor dared media to name the councilor. Now, that’s rumor mutating into news.

It happens quickly when the persons involved are public persons and the action goes beyond the privacy of the home. If the principal characters weren’t public figures and if it hadn’t reached the attention of public authority, it would’ve remained a rumor.

Shelf life

How it unravels, if it’s true or merely concocted, determines its length of stay on the news shelf.

A city councilor once visited me in the newsroom and shed a few tears to plead his innocence in a publicized adultery scandal. He lied. Soon, he left the country, towed by a furious wife.

That was one rumor that turned out to be not just rumor.