One false move

It’s never been easier for a single mistake to define a whole life

Occasionally, as a television presenter, you come across stories that make your blood run cold. The last time it happened, I was live on air and I virtually stopped speaking. I wish I could say the story was about some appalling human rights abuse or a new threat of global recession. But no. It was about a Russian newsreader, Tatyana Limanova, who committed a spectacular act of career self-sabotage by apparently flipping her finger at the camera live on air, immediately after a reference to President Obama. She seemed to have survived, at first, but within days her moment was on YouTube and the world was watching. Limanova had discovered the wrong kind of global celebrity, with the implicit added tease of a Cold War rerun. Amid accusations of anti-Americanism, she was hurried out into the cold.

I remain sympathetic to Limanova’s predicament. It is the kind of thing I have almost done 100 times or more. A gesture of a second, ending a ten-year career. Let’s be honest, very few of us will get through life without one of these moments. The question is not whether a foolish act is committed, but how far and how fast the evidence of it will travel across the world. Ten years ago, these moments of incompetence or madness quietly disappeared. Today, social networking sites mean that while a moment may be gone, it is never forgotten. Ms Limanova has joined an unhappy roster of people who face the prospect of being remembered in the public consciousness for a single brief act. Something which should be a footnote can instead become the headline of a life.

Ask Lars von Trier, the acclaimed director whose recent Nazi joke backfired so badly that he was banned from the Cannes film festival.