Turn Every Page: Reputation
“A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired,
but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.”
Matt Araiza is a really good football player. He was a record-setting punter in college. He was a good prospect, was drafted in the 6th round, and earned his team’s starting position as a rookie. But now, less than two years later, he is a free agent searching for a team.
In the summer of 2022, Araiza was accused (falsely, apparently) of raping a 17-year old in 2021, when he was 21. His accuser filed a civil lawsuit. Araiza countersued for defamation. The parties agreed to mutually dismiss their suits with no money exchanging hands. The police and county prosecutor investigated criminal charges, but declined to pursue the matter for lack of evidence. And then it all went away. Or did it?
“My name, my reputation — this will be tied to me forever, that won’t go away.” As Araiza is experiencing, a hit to one’s reputation is likely to be a permanent blemish with everyone “keep[ing] their eyes on the spot where the crack was” as Joseph Hall said.
The value of one’s reputation is hard to measure, and it’s the kind of thing that you don’t really value until it is tarnished. And once it’s lost, it is nearly impossible to rehabilitate one’s reputation even if the loss of reputation is based on a false accusation or even after one is vindicated in a court of law. The court of public opinion is not as forgiving.
Araiza was dropped by the Buffalo Bills right after the lawsuit was filed. That seems like a reasonable move for an organization. A commentator on NFL.com explained how they thought it was “the easy decision”: “Araiza certainly has the right to defend himself, and the Bills have the right to protect their franchise from a disturbing accusation. But boil this down to football math, which is ultimately the most cynical but also most important calculus in the NFL: Araiza is a punter—and while he is very good at punting, he is also a rookie, a sixth-round draft pick, with no track record of NFL success and without an enormous contract the Bills will have to pay.” It was better, essentially, for the Bills to remove Araiza (and the negative publicity to the franchise) as quickly as possible so they could get back to playing football.
But maybe “football math” should not be our guiding principle in these situations. The Bills were quick to drop Araiza when presented with an accusation, but they are not as quick to hire him back now that he has been exonerated. News reports said that prosecutors had “more than 35 witness statements and 10 search warrants that found four terabytes of information regarding the incident.” And with all that, there was no evidence tying Araiza to the charges. In fact, the prosecutor told Araiza’s accuser, “In looking at the videos on the sex tape, I absolutely cannot prove any forceable sexual assault based upon what happened.” The prosecutor explained to the accuser that Araiza was not even physically present at the party when she said she was assaulted.
Even though San Diego State University, the San Diego County Police, and the San Diego County Prosecutor each conducted independent investigations and found nothing, Araiza is still in the same position he was when first accused—without a job and with no certain future.
Reversing the effects of a false accusation is not like flipping a switch. Reputation has a long half-life. It’s a phenomenon attested to throughout history and in literature. Just think of Romeo and Juliet and Juliet’s “What’s in a name?” speech. Romeo’s name—his familial association and the family’s reputation (not even his own individual reputation)—meant certain things in society. Importantly for Juliet, it meant that she could never be with Romeo publicly. The name “Montague” carried a certain reputation, and it was impossible for Juliet to break through the barrier it created.
In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean leaves behind his criminal past and becomes someone else entirely. He is widely known as an upstanding member of society—the mayor and major employer of his little town. The change in his reputation, however, came at the cost of leaving his real identity behind and running from the law. In the book, Valjean experiences a crisis of conscience when he hears that an innocent man was identified as “Jean Valjean” and would be sent to prison for his own crimes. Ultimately, Valjean decided to reveal his true identity, which confounded the people in his town and tarnished his now-stellar reputation—all in order to save an innocent man from prison. For Jean Valjean, the value of his reputation was not worth an innocent man languishing in prison.
I’ve been reading a 2022 doctoral dissertation in Canon Law, The Right of a Cleric to Bona Fama (by Michael Joseph Mazza). That work is not something most people would read, as it’s a lot of inside baseball stuff. But it has a very good background on the history of defamation and the right to a good reputation and it is also relevant to some of the work I do. From early on, society has tried to protect people’s good reputations. The Code of Hammurabi included severe penalties for people who accused someone falsely—“if the case involved a false accusation of a capital charge, the one who brought the false charge is to be executed instead. An unproven accusation of adultery could lead to the branding of the forehead of the man who made the false accusation.” (Mazza, at 161-62) Other legal structures required certain safeguards to reveal or prevent false accusations, like in the Old Testament story of Susanna and the requirement that there be two witnesses who testify consistently.
Throughout history, preserving people’s reputations has been seen as both a personal and societal good. At one point in history, it was believed that “because fame and honor are as valuable as life itself, they can be defended, even to the point of death.” (Mazza, 189) That may seem extreme, but reputation has been an important interest for society throughout time. In Rosenblatt v. Baer, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that “[s]ociety has a pervasive and strong interest in preventing and redressing attacks upon reputation.” Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 86 (1966). Indeed, defamation law has grown into its own field such that that some attorneys devote their entire practice to it.
For a while, the language in Rosenblatt seemed to hold true and there was a societal commitment to preserving reputation. There’s a story in An Ordinary Man, Richard Norton’s great biography of Gerald Ford, where Ford’s campaign ad man, Mal MacDougall, proposed a negative ad against Jimmy Carter in the fall of 1976, right when it would have had a significant impact on the campaign: “Mal MacDougall crafted an ad citing eleven issues, from right-to-work laws to capital punishment, to make the case for Carter as a flip-flopper. Out of the question, said the campaign’s lawyers. Mere newspaper articles, the source of many of MacDougall’s quotes, were not considered reliable enough to justify such attacks.”
When dealing with another person’s reputation in 1976, even newspaper articles “were not considered reliable enough to justify such attacks.” Contrast that with what Norton calls “the character assassination routinely vomited by modern campaigns.” In today’s political campaigns, politicians and their handlers seem to just make stuff up. And with the Internet and social media, today’s stories get circulated faster and more broadly than Gerald Ford could have ever imagined.
So when someone’s reputation is tarnished unjustly, how can that person rehabilitate their good name? There does not seem to be an easy or good answer.
Under early Canon Law, the Church used a system of “purgation,” where “the person defamed was entitled to a public declaration of innocence, and thus he was restored to bona fama.” (Mazza, at 187) The accused also had, in some cases, the right to file a claim against the accuser for a false accusation and receive some compensation. The current Code, after changes were made in 2021, states that defamation carries with it “a mandatory ‘just penalty’ (‘iusta poena puniatur’), but also requires that ‘adequate satisfaction’ (‘congruam satisfactionem’) be made.” (Mazza, at 264)
Determining what satisfaction is “adequate” is difficult, both in the canonical and civil context. As Mazza recounts, “[o]n May 25, 1987, after being acquitted by a New York jury of charges related to larceny and fraud, Catholic businessman Ray Donovan famously asked the media: ‘Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?’” (Mazza, at 346) The harsh reality is that a monetary award, or even a public apology from a false accuser, may never be enough to recover one’s good reputation.
We have an imperfect system of justice. In the case of reputation, it is wise to heed Robert Greene’s advice in The 48 Laws of Power: “Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.”
Remember to turn every page. Enjoy your weekend. Please let me know whether you need anything.
Best,
Aaron