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glatt · 11-13-2006, 04:16 PM

I'm not defending this guy so much as attacking this article. It's all about sensationalism and it only reports the official police line. The cops have a tendency to make things seem like a bigger deal than they are, so I tend to take what they say with a grain of salt.

So let's look at this for a second, the story uses the standard way of reporting current ages by saying his name, followed by a date. It's reporting that he is currently 22. It doesn't spell it out for you, it hopes you just get that number stuck in your head, and you don't wonder if that's his current age, or the age he was when he committed the crime. But it's written the way they write it when that is the current age. When they talk about previous ages, they always say things like "then 22." I think it's his current age.

Then it clearly says the girl was 12 when the crime happened. It's reporting his current age and her former age. Why is it mixing ages like that? Then it goes on to say that he's been in jail for 2 years and three months. So what if he just turned 22 a few days ago? That would mean that he was 19 when he went to jail. How long do legal proceedings take there? Maybe he was 18 when the crime was committed. Article doesn't say. There's a very good chance he was 18.

They could have run the headline "12 year old girl hides 18 year old boyfriend in bedroom." It's still a little shocking, but not going to sell as many newspapers as "Paedo hid under girl's bed." Both headlines would be factual, but they would rather make their readers' blood boil than try to write the whole story. And as long as we are talking about motives, why are they running this story 2 years and three months later? Where, exactly, is the news? There is nothing new here.

To recap: this story is blatantly one sided. It's very loose with pertinent facts. It came out about 3 years after the fact.

11-13-2006, 04:16 PM	#10
glatt ™ Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Arlington, VA Posts: 27,717	I'm not defending this guy so much as attacking this article. It's all about sensationalism and it only reports the official police line. The cops have a tendency to make things seem like a bigger deal than they are, so I tend to take what they say with a grain of salt. So let's look at this for a second, the story uses the standard way of reporting current ages by saying his name, followed by a date. It's reporting that he is currently 22. It doesn't spell it out for you, it hopes you just get that number stuck in your head, and you don't wonder if that's his current age, or the age he was when he committed the crime. But it's written the way they write it when that is the current age. When they talk about previous ages, they always say things like "then 22." I think it's his current age. Then it clearly says the girl was 12 when the crime happened. It's reporting his current age and her former age. Why is it mixing ages like that? Then it goes on to say that he's been in jail for 2 years and three months. So what if he just turned 22 a few days ago? That would mean that he was 19 when he went to jail. How long do legal proceedings take there? Maybe he was 18 when the crime was committed. Article doesn't say. There's a very good chance he was 18. They could have run the headline "12 year old girl hides 18 year old boyfriend in bedroom." It's still a little shocking, but not going to sell as many newspapers as "Paedo hid under girl's bed." Both headlines would be factual, but they would rather make their readers' blood boil than try to write the whole story. And as long as we are talking about motives, why are they running this story 2 years and three months later? Where, exactly, is the news? There is nothing new here. To recap: this story is blatantly one sided. It's very loose with pertinent facts. It came out about 3 years after the fact.