Did I ever tell you about Gossip? (San 9)

One of the big movements in Jewish summer camps and religious schools is to teach kids about the importance of avoiding lashon hara (often translated as gossip).

We read in Bava Batra (164a) that lashon hara is a sin for which a person engages everyday.

Here is an article that comes down very hard on gossip.

However, I wonder about this. I want to point to two cases where gossip said to do good. The first we find in todays daf (San 9). Here we learn that if a women is suspected of adultery and there are no witnesses, we shouldn't rule out that witnesses will not come forward eventually. Word of mouth is a powerful thing and after the news spreads like rapid-fire that a certain women is on trial, anyone who might have information will know to come forward.

The other case is similar. We read in the third chapter of Bava Batra about a concept called chazakah. This concept says that if I live in a property for 3 years and no one complains that I have stolen it, it is mine by presumption. The reason for this is that even if the owner is in a far off land, people like to gossip and he will learn soon enough about the stolen property. 3 years will give enough time for him to find out and get back to his property to kick me off.

Jews have a name for people who deal in gossip (yenta) and it's often a derogatory term. Today Rosalind Wiseman has coined a new term in queen bees and wanna bees , the Banker, who deals in information and uses it as social capital.

Nevertheless, we learn from these two examples that just like torture the Rabbi didn't take a definitive stand on gossip. That is, unless we've been translating lashon hara wrong in our camps and schools and it means something more nuanced than gossip...

If we learn anything from the ethics of lashon hara it might be that when it smells of corruption maybe its your job to gossip about it. Thoughts?