Paranormal sighting in Toronto

How do you tell what is normal in Toronto anyway?

Okay, cheap shot. But not half as cheap as what passes for journalism in the story: Paranormal sighting in Toronto by David Bezmozgis in the Saturday Nov. 28 edition of the Globe and Mail.

Focusing on Ms. Nateliya Frolova, the story concerns Russian immigrants  bringing with them a fascination with paranormal clairvoyance and healing. In introducing the piece, Mr. Bezmozgis says, what distinguishes Ms. Frolova and many of her Russian counterparts from the regular Western clairvoyants are the Russians’ claims to supernatural healing abilities.

Notice Mr. Bezmozgis says there are, claims to supernatural healing abilities, not that there are such supernatural healing abilities.  The difference is crucial. It is the difference between being honest with readers or lying to them. Unfortunately, the honesty doesn’t last long. References to claims soon disappear and soon Mr. Bezmozgis is presenting things as statements of fact despite having done no checking to confirm such statements as accurate or not. Here is a small list of such claims made in the story:

Speaking of Ms. Nateliya Frolova, her grandmother, a renowned faith healer, drew patients from every corner of the Soviet Union.

When Ms. Frolova was 15, she started to see people’s internal organs.

Suddenly, one day, as she was walking down a pedestrian thoroughfare, the people became transparent before her.

She went to medical school, but flunked out after a bizarre incident involving a stethoscope: Absentmindedly, she diagnosed a patient without putting the device in her ears.

In Ukraine, she had run a school where she taught people how to develop extra-sensory powers.

Ms. Frolova treats them by cleansing their auras-a procedure which involves her standing at her patients backs, intoning Christian prayers, and hurling their negative energy into a virtual energy into a virtual bonfire at her feet.

Three such sessions-not two or four-are required to deliver a client from the evil eye.

She can diagnose and treat a person from a photograph,

Everyone of these statements are offered to us as statements of fact. Mr. Bezmozgis doesn’t say, Ms. Frolova claims she can diagnose and treat a person from a photograph but that, she can diagnose and treat a person from a photograph.

If you believe she can, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.

In matters of law, the press goes to great lengths, appropriate ones, to separate fact from claims of fact. We read that someone has only been accused of a crime not convicted, or that the prosecution claims Mr. Jones did something wrong.  The press is careful in such instances because it doesn’t want to trample on anyone’s rights and because they can get sued if they do.

Consumers of the media, however, have no such rights. Newspapers can’t get sued for offering statements as facts they haven’t bothered to check, nor for making such patently stupid claims as made by Mr. Bezmozgis in Paranormal sighting in Toronto. Presumably, the media, or the Globe and Mail in this case,  doesn’t much care for being honest with readers.

The only defense the reader has is to remember who is feeding them nonsense as truth and who isn’t.  Mr. David Bezmozgis would have you believe that a woman in Toronto can detect the existence of tumors from photographs.

Remember that next time Mr. Bezmozgis has something else he would like you to believe.