Speaking Personally - A resource left unused
Tue, 10/01/2024 - 2:05pm
admin
By:
Amanda Mendez, publisher
For once, I am a member of the media responding to a letter from a public official, and not vice versa. I read Mountain View-Birch Superintendent Lanna Tharp’s letter to the community, and immediately asked her to meet with me. Her letter is reprinted on this page for easy reference.
As I scanned and re-read her call to action for responsible reporting in the media, I cringed for the way a sensitive story was reported by a Springfield-based broadcasting company. And I mourned the lost opportunity in which the school could have communicated this sticky situation meaningfully via a trusted source of local media.
As it so happens, I consider Howell County News to be that trusted source of local news in Mountain View. This publication covers Mountain View every week. We have your sports, your crime, your local government. We cover your scandals and your successes. I once put an editorial cartoon depicting a mayor in a pair of pink tights on this very opinion page. I even made it into Ricky Baker’s latest comic book.
This is an award-winning publication with internationally acclaimed opinion writing. I believe our reputation is for being unflinching, but fair.
And we’re right down the road from Mountain View.
When I met with Mrs. Tharp, along with school board president Eric Wells Friday afternoon, my message was simple – consider me a resource.
As the local media, it is my role to facilitate difficult or controversial communication between public officials and my readers, the public. When reporting on delicate situations, my goal is to ask the kinds of questions public officials can answer without ducking behind the word “confidential.”
In this case, what took place instead was a perfect storm of engendering bad faith. A family was outraged. The public had questions. The officials declined an interview, offered a statement instead, and the media told only one side of the story, allegedly quoting that official out of context.
I would sympathize with the reporter if they had simply acknowledged the declined interview. “No comment” would still be quote, after all.
In response to the story, Tharp wrote this letter. It uses many words to give very little information. It chastises sensationalism in the media.
In our meeting, I asked Tharp how the media could have done better. What was the ideal story on this situation?
She said she would not have done a press release on this, or any other story about student discipline. She would have preferred the outlet not to report anything without all the facts.
Though I appreciate her position, we must acknowledge that unofficial bits of information always will seep out from unofficial sources, distorting the truth. You simply can’t get all the facts when confronted with a confidentiality policy. A strong local media can be the source of vetted, reliable information.
As a public official, and especially as a school official, you cannot feed the public a nothing sandwich and call it transparency. Nebulously citing “confidentiality laws,” is misleading and frustrating.
As I told Tharp and Wells in our meeting Friday, I would have liked to see a more specific definition of the parameters of the information available and the decisions to invoke those policies, even if it was complicated legalese.
Missouri’s Sunshine Laws are a shield, not a wall. Certain topics may be shielded from the public under them, but it is not a requirement. Officials must choose to close the information. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) gets us closer to legal protection of students’ information, but it applies specifically to documents or “educational records,” not necessarily interviews.
When asked to define the “confidentiality laws,” in the letter, Tharp clarified that she was referring to a school district policy and emailed me Monday to show me where to find those policies.
Maybe I’m naïve to think any news story could have prevented division, mistrust, and high emotion in the community. In the last edition, we ran an article by Laura Wagner on the larger county-wide and nationwide trend of social media scares vis a vis student safety. In my professional opinion, the disciplinary actions taken by this school district for this one situation did not meet the definition of news.
The voracious public appetite for more information about it, however, seems to indicate that I am mistaken. Perhaps that appetite could have been quelled with a better article. We’ll never know.
All reporters sometimes miss the mark, but for a local reporter, there are consequences in daily life.
Before heading to the Youth Center where Howell County News was the free skate night sponsor, my family had dinner at the ham and bean supper Friday night. I took my kids to Pioneer Days on Saturday too. One thing is clear to me because I live and work quite nearby – this conversation is not over.
People are still talking about it over a bowl of ham and beans or while they squint in the sun at Pioneer Days. They want a dialogue.
One idea I have heard mentioned frequently is a desire to attend the upcoming school board meeting on October 24. That would be great, but please know it will probably not be a dialogue. Those meetings follow Robert’s Rules of Order. The school board is not required to take any action or make any response to guest comments. They could simply listen and offer no response at all.
And I think that would make everything worse.
The solution I offered when I sat down with Tharp and Wells on Friday was a moderated community forum – a chance for an actual dialogue between the public and the officials who serve them, facilitated by a professional, impartial, local moderator.
An in-person event won’t solve every problem, but it could go a long way towards fostering an environment of unity and transparency.
Tharp and Wells did not commit to this idea when we parted ways on friendly terms last week, but if you like it, let them know with a call or email.
Or email or call me with your thoughts. I would be delighted to hear from you. editor@howellcountynews.com 417-252-2123