Judgment of story-play criticized

The front pages of the Daily Local News have been jampacked these past few months with stories about the misadventures of a couple of former Coatesville Area School District administrators, the alleged poor judgment of the district’s nowformer solicitor, and some questionable decision-making on the part of the CASD school board.

All of this is arguably newsworthy, although (in my opinion) maybe not all front-page newsworthy.

At the same time, many of us are still reeling from the unspeakable horror of news about a helpless 3-year-old child who had been tortured and killed by the very adults who should have been protecting and nurturing him.

Recent stories in the DLN have tried to connect this poor child’s death with the attendance policies of the same Coatesville Area School District, making a highly tenuous connection between the fact that the victim’s six-year-old brother missed 10 days of kindergarten, and the death of this poor, non-school-age toddler. District officials apparently followed procedure, and besides, an announced home visit would probably not have unearthed the wellhidden awful deeds of these perpetrators. While I know your job is to sell newspapers (including a few that have carried my own columns in them), I also think the paper has an obligation to present a balanced picture of a school district. This is clearly not happening, because during a recent conversation I had with a stranger in West Chester – in which I mentioned that I was a Coatesville schools graduate – she remarked that, “Oh, I hear the schools over there are terrible!

Not so much. Has your paper reported, for example, that the Coatesville district was one of only two Chester County school districts being honored by the College Board on its 5th Annual Advanced Placement (“AP”) Honor Roll? ... (EDITOR’S NOTE: The AP Honor Roll story appeared on Page A3 of the Daily Local’s Sunday, Nov. 30, editions and on the dailylocal.com website

Or that the percentage of Coatesville students who scored a 3 [out of a maximum 5] or better on the AP exams continues to exceed the average percentages of students in Pennsylvania and across the globe who also take these exams?

If so, it hasn’t been anywhere near the front page.

I totally understand the ageold newspaper saying that “If it bleeds, it leads.” I also know that in a time of declining newspaper readership, fewer people will pull out their wallets and buy the paper at Wawa if the headline on the front page trumpets, “SUZIE WINS MERIT BADGE!”

Just the same, I think that a responsible newspaper has an obligation not to portray an entire school district in an unfairly negative light. The net result of this – lest you think it is minor – has been depressed real estate prices and an unjustified fear of many Chester Countians to put their children in a school district that has turned out not only hundreds of AP scholars, but legions of successful business leaders, professionals and other highachievers.

Go ahead and report on the poor judgment (if not total stupidity) of a small handful of administrators and elected officials. But don’t malign an entire school system, with its hundreds of dedicated teachers, and thousands of hard-working students, when you do it.

That, in my opinion, would be fair.

Barry Rabin Downingtown

Accuses the media of trying to make the ) news

I get very tired of the way the media, instead of reporting the “news”, tries to make the “news” to meet their biased view.

I think the recent reaction to the grand jury decision to not indict the police officer is a major example of this.

In the extensive reporting on the Michael Brown situation I do not recall any report on this case where the media (both TV and newspaper) did not lead in with the statement that emphasized “the case where an “unarmed” teenager was killed by a police officer.” There was repeated emphasis on the “unarmed” teenager.

After reading (and hearing) this type of report thousands of times, is it any wonder that the public reacted any way other than they did. In my view, the media set up the public to expect nothing other than criminal charges against the police officer from the grand jury trial. When that did not happen ... well, sadly, we saw the result.

Dave Gilbert Kennett Square