Saturday, January 14, 2012

The story NOT on page 1

In just one week, three San Francisco Bay area teachers were arrested on sex abuse charges. I'm not surprised if this is news to you. I saw very little in my local papers. The latest case involved a Union City high school teacher who is accused of having sex with a 16-year-old student. The earlier cases involved a teacher and a 14-year-old. The other was a case of sexual assault by a teacher whose students include second and third graders. All in one week!!

My first reaction was "what if these people had been priests?" I bet the story would be on page one. Today the San Francisco Chronicle ran a six graf story about the latest case. Pretty short, but enough to gain 175 comment postings under the story in around six hours. Few of the comments noted the difference in coverage. That is to be expected. Please see this blog's 2007 entry on the AP teacher sex abuse series that few newspapers ran, even though it was too little and much too late.

All this is more evidence that news is what newspapers say it is. Think not? I wonder where the Occupy movement would be if the MLM (Major League Media) covered it the same way it covered anti-abortion marches. There's an anti-abortion demonstration coming up this month in San Francisco, an event that in the past drew 35,000 people. You didn't know? Again, I'm not surprised.