The Norwich Bulletin’s Sunday editorial — why it’s so wrong
The Norwich Bulletin has Julie Amero as the focus of its main Sunday editorial today. Clearly the paper has been on the receiving end of a lot of negative comments, including mine from a previous blog entry here.
That’s because it is the only institution, aside from the Norwich police and prosecutor’s office, to come out against Amero. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — everyone’s entitled to an opinion. But what’s disturbing is that the Bulletin seems to be playing fast and loose with the facts in the case, as well as with its own history of it.
It wrote on Sunday
Whether Amero was purposefully exploring pornographic Web sites, or was the victim of a technological assault, is irrelevant.
Oddly, though, that wasn’t irrelevant when the Bulletin expressed its opinion in its editorial of January 11, when it wrote
Norwich substitute teacher Julie Amero clearly was wrong to access several pornographic Web sites on her computer at Kelly Middle School
and
Still, she was accused and convicted of intentionally accessing several pornographic sites — not pop-up ads or windows, as she suggested.
Almost as an afterthought the paper added then, “And she did not turn off the computer when the students saw the images.”
Now, suddenly, the case is not about whether she deliberately accessed the porn, but about whether she did enough to “protect” the kids who were trying to see the images. Way to ignore your own history, Bulletin.
In fact, the Bulletin went so far as to reverse course from its earlier editorial, writing Sunday that whether Amero deliberately access the porn is now “moot.”
It wasn’t moot in January, though.
Then we get into the spin. For example, the Bulletin wrote this gem:
It’s an unlikely sentence, even though children were exposed to six hours of Internet pornography under Amero’s watch.
Notice the spin? It sounds like a group of kids were sitting in a classroom while porn flicks showed continuously on a screen. In reality, there were different groups of kids in the classroom and only a handful said they saw anything, and those kids deliberately sought it out.
In fact, according to the trial transcript, the children testified quite specifically that they could not see the computer from their seats.
Q: And you were sitting at your desk, and you could see the screen on the computer while you were sitting there?
A: No.
(Transcript p. 157)
In fact, according to the transcript, the children testified that the only time they saw anything inappropriate was when they went to the teacher’s desk. One went to ask her a question. One went to throw away a piece of paper. And so on.
So much for being “exposed to six hours of Internet pornography.”
And in fact, contrary to the Bulletin’s editorial, Amero did try to stop the kids from seeing what was on the computer, as one of those kids testified:
Q: And what happened as the picture, as the web page loaded up?
A: She turned the screen so no one could see it.
(Transcript p. 178)
The Bulletin, it seems, doesn’t want to admit its mistakes, and it is now spinning the facts to support an irrational conclusion.
Want another example of spin? Here’s a subtle one:
Yes, there were victims: the children in the classroom who saw the graphic images. Six of them testified to the events of Oct. 19, 2004.
What the paper doesn’t say is that the six of them testified that
- they couldn’t see the computer from their seats;
- they only saw the porn when the went up to the teacher’s desk;
- Amero pushed them away from the computer; and
- they only saw things for a fraction of a second
All this is in the trial transcript, which the Bulletin suggests we read. Perhaps its own staff needs to read it as well.
Finally, the Bulletin does something the lawyers in the case did as well. The phrase is “assume facts in evidence.” In this case, the paper is taking as a given that seeing a few seconds of porn is harmful to the kids.
I, for one, would like to see proof of that. I’d like to see proof that teenagers seeing naked people is bad for them.
You can argue that continuous, long-term exposure isn’t good, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a few seconds at most. Is it embarrassing for parents? Possibly. Is it giggle inducing? Certainly. Is it harmful?
If you’re going to say yes, as the Norwich Bulletin is, you’d better prove it. Because, let’s be honest, if seeing naked people was really bad for teenagers, you’d have a lot more of them in therapy.
A paper’s editorial board has a lot more freedom than reporters — most notably, it can (and is supposed to) express opinions. But those opinions still need to be based on facts and evidence.
In this case, once again, the Bulletin has chosen to ignore or spin the facts to support an erroneous conclusion.
It’s embarrassing.
[Note: I made a few minor typo corrections to this post after publishing.]
Leland says:
This just keeps getting better and better. So Andrew, as a part of the Gannet family, have you received any heat based on your stance?
P.S. You should have posted the whole thing over there.