Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Round Up: Hump Day Edition...

Not much time to write on this damp, overcast Wednesday. Here's a quick run-down of what's in the news.

The beat goes on: Both sides in the Turf Valley expansion case filed their written summations last Friday. One side seems happy, the other...not so much. Care to guess which is which?

At least this one's a wrap: Another year, another rejection for proponents of a Columbia charter school. I'd say better luck next time, but after three unsuccessful attempts, this one appears to be the group's last.

Best schools in the state: There's really nothing I can say about this except "Wow." Here's the story's lede: "Sixteen-year-old Serena Fasano, a junior at Glenelg High School, has been awarded a patent for a protein that she discovered - one that may someday help fight one of the world's deadliest diseases." Again, wow.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ease up. The media reports were based on a report from the student in the backseat of the crashed vehicle as well as other students involved earlier in the night. None of this is good, but jumping on the police doesn't help either. Prayers for the families.

Hayduke said...

Every mention of alcohol in the news stories is attributed to police, none to the student in the backseat, Christopher Missett. What's more, as far as I can tell, the media hasn't even talked to him. I also haven't seen any indications that other students at the school spoke to the media and mentioned drinking.

Now, maybe the police got the information about alcohol from Missett. Maybe he told them they were drinking. But if this is the case, why bother pushing the "odor of alcohol" line? All that does is make their case sound flimsy, which is especially not good considering the way the case has gone for them so far.

What I meant to say in the post but forgot to was that police are often under a lot of pressure from the media to release information before deadline. Perhaps some of the pressure led them to release information before they should have.

I also don't understand why one can't pray for the families of the teens and be critical of the police department's handling of the investigation. These aren't mutually exclusive.

Hayduke said...

The more I think about it the more it seems rushing to get information out was the real problem. In this respect, we're all partially to blame. We, or our media surrogates, demand the facts as soon as something happens, but often these requests are unreasonable. In our rush to know the answers, we overlook or ignore the intermediate stuff.