I write a lot about narrative, especially the ways it gets distorted in news and social media. After my ordeal and the ensuing distortions of my story featured in local media, I began looking at how the outlets got everything so wrong. In short, their narrative was corrupt because the inputs were corrupt.
The facts of my case were simple: I was charged and arrested for an alleged in 2018, the case was dismissed in 2020, recharged in 2021, and I was acquitted in 2022. Those are the facts without shine or opinion. Everything beyond the basics is story and narrative. My writing on Out Of The Blue is my story about those years under the thumb of prosecutors who were seeking to put me in prison and what they did to me. But it’s also a guide for reading news narratives more critically—learning to distinguish fact from story, status from proof, and recognizing where credibility breaks down.
Facts alone can be compelling, but the narrative around those facts is how we make sense of the story, what it means. University of Southern California Professor Walter Fisher, who wrote extensively about narrative and communication at USC, calls the tests we instinctively use coherence and fidelity. Coherence asks, does this story hold together on its own terms? Fidelity asks, does it ring true against what we can check—history, character, evidence, lived experience? Meaning, he says, sits in that narrative context.
Consider: “A man was seen leaving a building at midnight.” That’s a fact. But wrap it in narrative—”He was fleeing the scene” versus “He was working late”—and suddenly the same fact points to guilt or innocence. The story we build around that single moment determines what we believe happened.
The media does something similar to any storyteller. Start with facts (ideally), build a story around those facts to create context so readers can understand what’s happening. But the moment they launch off the facts, assuming those are knowable, the story is vulnerable to bias, invention, and slant because no one outside the story—in my case, my accuser or me—can truly know what happened.
My accuser knows. I know. You don’t, and neither does anyone in the media. Her best friends don’t know. Mine don’t either. My wife believes me, but she cannot know with absolute certainty because she wasn’t wherever my accuser claimed I was. By Fisher’s test, that uncertainty is fine as long as the story stays as close to what is known as possible, keeps the timeline straight, and aligns with the best available record. When it doesn’t, coherence and fidelity break.
That sounds like a useful frame, but man, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Because as hard as I worked to be as unvarnished, clear, and true as I can, there are challenges. First, my emotions cannot be sidelined when I’m writing or presenting my case. These emotions certainly harbor my anxieties, my anger and outrage over what my accuser did to me. Secondly, I cannot know why my accuser did what she did or why some came to believe her so adamantly. I know one thing: I didn’t do this. It is up to storytelling to carry the water, to make a coherent and honest case for my innocence. You can ask, does my story ring true, does it match the facts as they are known, and does my character and history reasonably support what I’m presenting? In other words, coherence.
My accuser’s story, given to the police and presented in news media, contained the kinds of inconsistencies I’ve documented in earlier episodes—shifting timelines, contradictory details, claims that didn’t align with physical evidence. Facts are solid; stories are fluid, and opinions about a thing are editorial.
When you read a news story, you can be pulled by what I call narrative capture. That’s when you’ve been presented with a ready-made plot that, essentially, seduces or persuades, sometimes without the anchor of evidence. The frame arrives first (hero or villain, motive, moral), and you likely will follow the plot laid out by the author instead of the facts. Strong language, good writing, and a tight arc pull you forward. The facts slide behind the scrim.
In earlier episodes, I argued that while the media often got many small facts right about my case, it ornamented those details and repeated unverified claims without due skepticism. Inference layered upon inference until the story outpaced the record—or, to put it another way, false statements gained credibility through repetition alone.
Those violent headlines and tawdry subtexts find purchase far quicker than anything as pedestrian as the truth. We would like to think we are not susceptible to predation by narrative, but of course we are.
The problem is exacerbated when a story aligns with a set of beliefs. If you believe corporations are corrupt, any story about corporate malfeasance feels true. If you believe the justice system is broken, any story about wrongful prosecution feels true—including, perhaps, mine. What’s stunning about our current cultural moment is how few of us actually take the time to check the narrative, to test the story against available fact-checking resources. If we did that as a habit, we would likely find that much of what we believe is true is a mixture of fact and fiction.
So, my little project is to focus on the habits of media consumption, rather than media reporting, to cultivate skeptical views of information and ideas.
In my case, time and again, I came across people who believed the stories about me simply because they appeared in the news. The outlet’s reputation lent the stories credibility. But reputation isn’t proof, and institutional trust can’t replace critical reading. Readers need to verify claims, check timelines, and ask whether the narrative fits the available evidence.
I’ve learned to start with a simple act of self-protection: name the frame. Before I let a headline, a lede, or a quote settle into me, I pause and ask, “What is this reporter setting up? What are they asking me to believe, and why?” I’ll even say it out loud: “This story wants me to believe X about Y because Z.” That little sentence has saved me from a lot of confusion. It’s a habit now.
The second practice is humbler than it sounds: I invest in my knowledge, but I’m most cautious, not about what I consume, but about what I believe after I consume it. I try to notice what hardens, the conclusions I leap to, because once it hardens, for me at least, it’s harder to let go.
We don’t just process facts; we live by coherent stories that we believe are true. But we might be wrong. Feeling strongly isn’t the same as proof. So, here are three rules for reading news narratives.
I’m quoting specific words and phrases from the 2018 Star Tribune article, printed the day after my arrest. I’m not quoting the entire article here, if you’re interested in reading it first, you’ll find the link in this episodes text.
Rule 1: Check the verbs; locate the status.
The Tribune article states that I had “been charged with two counts.” That verb, “charged,” describes a status, not a proof. It tells you where the legal process stood that day; it does not tell you anything about what actually happened. The date matters because narratives flow in time, and early stories are often snapshots taken in motion, and often turn out to be wrong.
It goes on to say that I was “being held without bail.” Again, a status. Custody is not evidence. It is a condition of a system that, at its best, is still sorting claims from truth.
This is what I mean by checking the verbs: distinguish status from proof, process from fact.
Rule 2: Flag hedge words; ask for receipts.
The Tribune article is full of examples. The county attorney says, “We believe there are other people that can come forward” and describes “a pretty bad alleged abuse of power.” Notice “believe” and “alleged”—these are hedges. If you can’t see the evidence behind them, lower your confidence.
Festival management called the allegations “abhorrent.” That’s moral language, not proof.
I’m quoted denying the assault. Then: “Attorney could not be reached for comment.” My denial gets two lines; the accusations got paragraphs. That imbalance doesn’t prove guilt—it shows who answered the phone.
“Medical records confirm that her wrist was placed in a splint.” “Confirm” means a record exists, not how the injury happened.
Another passage: a witness heard noises that “sounded like banging.” Perception words signal distance—how something seemed, not what was proven.
Rule 3: Test for narrative coherence and fidelity.
Coherence asks: Do the claims fit together without bending time or memory? Fidelity asks: Does this square with the public record and how people actually behave under scrutiny?
Across the coverage of my case, claims shifted, timelines flexed, details contradicted each other. Much of what stayed loud in print didn’t match the court record or real-world patterns. That mattered because it was my life.
Listening to this, perhaps it’s too much, too many steps, to slow for fast news. But, I won’t let go of the idea that we, all of us, can do better in how we read the world, how we grapple with complexity. I’m hoping, that by taking what happened to me, and so many others, I can present an example of what happens when breaking news is ingested without the proper enzymes to break it down. This approach to reading and thinking should make room for our compassion, and every filter of kindness we can apply.
Listening to this, perhaps it sounds like too much—too many steps, too slow for a world that moves at the speed of breaking news. But I refuse to let go of the idea that we can do better in how we read the world, how we meet its complexity. What happened to me, what has happened to so many of us, stands as proof of what breaks when we swallow the news whole, without the time or tools to digest it. We deserve a better way forward. One that makes room for our compassion. One that reaches for every filter of kindness we possess—and holds them there, stubbornly, in the face of everything that tells us to move faster, react harder, feel less. This is the work. It’s my work. And it matters.
