Don’t believe everything you hear

Feb 07, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – A man convicted for murder was making a plea for a pardon from the governor of the state. Word of his plea got around to the family of the person the convict had murdered.

This family was raving mad that the convict would even dare to apply for clemency and they were determined to see him spend the rest of his days in prison.

As such they decided to spread rumors and lies. They passed the word from mouth to mouth but in a way that it would reach the governor and so influence his decision to pardon the convict.

The convict learnt about what was taking place. He learnt that the governor was in receipt of a great deal of hearsay information about him and he decided that he had to write to the governor urging him to ignore the hearsay stories that were being peddled about him. He wrote a small note, “Dear Governor, if you have heard what I have heard you heard, you heard a lie.”

That note, short as it was, probably caused more head-scratching in the governor’s office than the entire pardon application. One imagines the governor reading it once, twice, then calling in an aide and asking, “Is this English?”

The aide, not wanting to look foolish, nods confidently and says, “Yes sir, very advanced English.”

By the third reading, the governor is wondering whether the convict should be pardoned on the basis of creativity alone. Anyone who can twist a sentence into a linguistic pretzel like that deserves at least a weekend pass.

But jokes aside, the little note carries a big message, one that is as relevant outside prison walls as it is inside them. Hearsay has always been a powerful thing. Long before social media, WhatsApp broadcasts and anonymous Facebook pages with patriotic names, people were spreading stories the old-fashioned way: mouth to mouth, ear to ear, with a little seasoning added at each stop. By the time the story reaches its destination, it no longer resembles the truth. It is bigger, louder, uglier, and usually wearing a disguise.

The family in the story believed they were doing justice by spreading rumors. After all, they were hurting, angry and convinced that the convict deserved no mercy. Emotion has a way of dressing up gossip as righteousness. Once we feel morally justified, anything goes. We can exaggerate, invent, and speculate freely, all in the name of a “good cause.”

The governor, like many people in positions of authority, found himself swimming in a sea of information. Some of it was sworn testimony, some of it official reports, and some of it pure bacchanal. The challenge, then as now, is separating fact from fiction. In today’s world, the governor’s inbox would probably be flooded with forwarded messages beginning with “A reliable source told me…” which is usually code for “I made this up but please don’t question me.”

The convict’s note is funny because it exposes how ridiculous hearsay really is. “If you have heard what I have heard you heard, you heard a lie.” In other words, what you heard is not what happened; it is what someone said someone else said about what they think might have happened. By the time it reaches you, the truth is long dead and buried, probably without a proper funeral.

We see this play out every day. A public figure coughs, and by evening he is critically ill, by morning he is dead, and by lunchtime he has risen again, depending on which group chat you are in. A simple misunderstanding becomes a national scandal. A half-truth grows legs, runs faster than the truth, and gets a head start because the truth is still tying its shoelaces.

There is also a lesson here about how easily we are influenced. The family knew exactly what they were doing: planting seeds and trusting that they would grow into doubt. Doubt is powerful. You don’t even need to prove anything; you just need to make someone unsure. Once doubt takes root, facts have to work overtime.

The convict, ironically, showed more clarity than many of us. He understood that the battle was not just about what he did or did not do, but about what people were saying he did. He confronted hearsay directly, not with a long defence, but with a simple reminder: check your sources.

And so we come to the moral of the story. Before you believe what you hear, repeat what you hear, or forward what you hear, pause. Ask yourself whether you are dealing with facts or with echoes of other people’s opinions.

Hearsay can ruin reputations, influence decisions, and inflame emotions, all without a shred of evidence. Or, as the convict might put it more elegantly: if you hear what you heard you heard, make sure it isn’t just a lie you heard.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• convict, hear, murder, Peeping Tom

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