The recent fiasco at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose, Calif., where suspected con artist Anna Ayala claimed she bit into a finger in her bowl of chili, has underscored the dark side of the litigious society in which we live and the often detrimental effects of certain types of media.
Primarily, this situation shows how easy it has become to manipulate the whistle-blower’s role, twisting it from virtuous to vicious.
The Editorial Board sees great value in the interaction between whistle-blowers and the media, but the abuses of these frivolous charges by citizens, and the media outlets’ subsequent sensationalism, are too much to handle. Cable news channels saw the events in California as a sunny day, and shamelessly made hay for hour after hour and day after day. After police and Wendy’s investigated, the inconsistencies in Ayala’s case proved more suspicious than convincing, eventually leading to her arrest Thursday.
The San Jose Mercury News has now reported that following the initial publicity from Ayala’s scam, Wendy’s received “about 20 complaints in the last month — much more than usual — from diners about foreign objects in their chow.”
In these situations, media should aspire to give the American public solid information, not speculation.

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