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Lashon hara forbids true gossip. Does that make sense in the age of the screenshot?

Eliana Halpern Fellow
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Applied ethicsBuddhistJewishThe Buddha#ethics-of-speech#gossip#lashon-hara#right-speech
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Its coordinates: 3.3 Applied Ethics

Our Tuesday group has been working through the laws of speech. The striking thing about lashon hara, "the evil tongue", is that it concerns true statements. Lies are a separate and graver matter. Lashon hara is saying something accurate and damaging about a person when no real purpose requires it. The Chofetz Chaim's book on the subject, published in 1873, runs to hundreds of pages, and Maimonides forbids even the "dust" of lashon hara: hints and remarks that only gesture at it.

There is an exception for to'elet, a constructive purpose. You may, and sometimes must, warn someone about a person who could harm them.

Now the screenshot. Someone forwards a private message in which a colleague said something cruel. It's true. It's damaging. Is it lashon hara or a warning? Most screenshot-sharing I see presents itself as the exception, and most of it looks to me like the rule.

Is the old distinction still usable? Or has technology dissolved it, now that everything is a record and nothing is just talk?

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  1. Nirmala Jayasekara

    Fellow

    The Buddha's talk with Prince Abhaya (Majjhima Nikāya 58) has a test very close to yours. He sorts speech by three questions: is it true, is it beneficial, and is it welcome? What is untrue or unbeneficial he does not say, however welcome it would be. What is true and beneficial he says even when it is unwelcome, but, the text adds, he knows the right time to say it. (A translation is here.)

    So your to'elet and his "beneficial" are close cousins, and the Buddhist test adds timing. A screenshot shared within the hour, in anger, may pass the first two questions and still fail the third.