Saturday, February 12, 2005

On omitted names from newspapers

The Kingsport paper has this piece which lauds a sports reporter for leaving out the name of the school kid who committed the foul that cost the big Kingsport high school a basketball game.

By contrast, the Bristol paper wants to print every detail about an accused school teacher. Today's editorial does not acknowledge that the rights of the accused (and the accuser) are affected by the kind of publicity which the newspaper has chosen to give this case. I suspect that the newspaper has only itself to blame for the juvenile court's decision to close the preliminary hearing to the media.

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