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Respectful Disagreement about the Valley Patriot

In recent months, I’ve taken the editor of one of my local newspapers to task over what I’ve seen as his overeagerness to make judgement calls.

I unfollowed Tom Duggan on Facebook at one point because I was so pissed off. Duggan and I have since had a conversation, and I want to make sure everyone understands this: I stand by my earlier criticisms. But it was in no way meant as a personal attack. In fact, I have much respect for Duggan and believe he gets it right most of the time.

Mood music:

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Let’s go back a bit in time for some context.

Duggan reached out to me after I wrote this post on the case of Erin Cox, a North Andover High senior who was punished for being at a drinking party police busted up a few weeks ago. I argued that Duggan rushed to judgement when he published an article saying Cox appeared in court on drinking charges, which turned out to be untrue.

A few months before that, I blasted him for what I saw as his overeagerness in reporting the death toll of the Boston Marathon bombings. As is usually the case in the madness of collecting breaking news, Duggan received information on the death toll that turned out to be inflated. He corrected his information as it came in. But I felt — and still do — that he was in too much of a hurry to get the news first and that he should have waited for better confirmation before blasting details all over Facebook.

In both stories, Duggan believes I took him out of context, that I unfairly painted him as a rogue editor making things up and inflating details for the hell of it. He said he had no problem with criticism as long as it was fair and not based on spliced-together bits designed to paint him in an untrue light.

So let’s clarify some things:

This isn’t about splicing details together in a manner that fits the point I want to make. It’s about my reaction to his work as it unfolded on social media.

Duggan has done a lot of good around these parts. I worked at the Eagle-Tribune for nearly five years and know that the paper was in need of real competition. I was happy to see the Valley Patriot emerge as a check on my former employer. I actually think it made the Eagle-Tribune a better paper.

Duggan has a lot of heart and a passion to get it right. My problem in recent months wasn’t that he spread lies. He didn’t. It was that he got too excitable in the face of breaking news and rushed out information that needed more verification.

As someone who has been on the receiving end of criticism many times in my career, I know it’s no fun. But I have to call it as I see it.

But understand this: When I criticize Duggan, I do so with respect for all he’s done for the community.

Hat with Press tag

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Erin Cox Case: The Rush to Judgement Is a Two-Way Street

Some say criticism of North Andover School administrators in the Erin Cox case is a rush to judgement. No one knows what information was revealed behind closed doors, they say. And based on comments from other teens at the drinking party, Cox wasn’t the innocent, good friend the media has painted her to be.

On someone’s phone there’s video of Cox drinking and puking, they say.

Maybe that’s true. But the rush to judgement is a two-way street, as the local Valley Patriot newspaper demonstrated yesterday.

Mood music:

Earlier in the day, Duggan published a story citing anonymous law enforcement sources in North Andover who claimed high school student Erin Cox was to appear in court on charges of possession of alcohol and that her family was returning donations from supporters.

Hours later, Duggan was forced to retract the story and publish this one, which drops the first claim and retains the latter.

Other publications blindly ran with Duggan’s new information and looked stupid for it later in the day. This Yahoo! article at least captured the uncertainty of it all.

This isn’t the first time Duggan has rushed out misinformation. On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, in the frenzy to be first with new details, he was on Facebook reporting an inflated death toll. He did so with the gusto of a football commentator announcing a touchdown. It’s an approach I’ve called him out on in the past. To his credit, Duggan pulled the original story and was honest about it.

This whole affair captured a human weakness we all share: We love to find things to get outraged about and then shoot our mouths off before we have all the facts.

I’m guilty of it, too. I once wrote a post defending Lance Armstrong amid all the allegations of doping. Then the facts came out and I had to admit I was wrong.

It’s always been this way, and it won’t change. We are, after all, human beings.

The best we can do is acknowledge that we rushed to judgement once we’re proven wrong. Doing so takes courage. Few things are as humiliating as discovering you’ve made an ass of yourself. But the truth always comes out eventually. The key is what we do with the truth once we have it.

Erin Cox

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North Andover School Policy Trumps Common Sense

Friendships between teens is a tricky thing.

Sometimes your friends are up to no good and the right decision is to stay away. Helping friends steal hubcaps off cars or start fires are examples that come to mind. But when a friend drinks too much at a party and has the good sense to call you for a ride instead of choosing to drive drunk, you should help them out, even if the party might be raided by police when you show up.

That’s my opinion, and by that rubric Erin Cox was being a good friend — a courageous one, even — when she drove to a party to pick up a friend and get her home safely.

Mood music:

When a friend has been drinking and you can keep them from getting behind the wheel and putting other lives in danger, it’s a no-brainer. It’s simple, common sense.

Unfortunately, as we’ve often seen in recent years, school administrators are perfectly comfortable casting aside common sense when there’s a rule to be upheld. That appears to be what happened when North Andover High School punished Cox for violating their strict policy against alcohol and drug abuse. According to the article Sara Brown wrote for The Eagle-Tribune,  the school demoted the senior and honors student from being captain of the volleyball team and suspended her from playing for five games for violating the policy.

“Two weeks ago, Cox received a call from a friend at a party who was too drink to drive,” Brown wrote. “When she got there to pick up her friend, North Andover police had also arrived. Police arrested several students for underage possession of alcohol, however, Cox was cleared by police for not drinking or in the possession of alcohol.”

Tim McCarthy, a reporter with The North Andvover Citizen, quotes a prepared statement from School Superintendent Kevin Hutchinson that says, “The rules for student-athletes strongly discourage students from engaging in conduct that is unlawful or fails to promote the health and safety of the youth in our community. Each incident is fully investigated and decided upon based on the individual facts and circumstances.” As a policy, he said the district doesn’t comment on student discipline matters.

Was information revealed in the hearing that we don’t know about — something that justified punishment? We’ll probably never know. Based on public reports from police and witnesses at the scene, however, nothing in Cox’s behavior justifies getting punished.

If she was indeed helping a friend in need and, in the process, keeping other people out of harm’s way, then she deserved better.

Rules are important. They help our children distinguish right from wrong. But when rules are followed with no regard for unique circumstances, kids learn something else — that those enforcing the rules are misguided and deserve to be defied.

Good luck with that one, North Andover.

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