letters

to the editor

Intrusive photo

To the editor:

Your recent editorial defending a decision to publish a photograph from the baptism of an accused teacher’s child frames the choice as good journalism — providing readers with more information and telling more of the story.

But good journalism must sometimes yield to something equally important: common decency. Kansans value truth, but they also value protecting the innocent from unnecessary harm.

The editorial describes the image as a “family photo.” That characterization sidesteps primary issues. Reasonable minds could differ about using a generic family picture. This was an infant’s baptism — a sacred moment about the child and God’s work in their life.

Co-opting the child’s moment and invoking the family’s faith to magnify the father’s alleged wrongdoing risks turning what should remain a sacred memory into a permanent visual footnote to a public scandal.

Your editorial notes the emotions your staff felt when they saw the photograph. Those same elements were effectively conveyed in writing. Virtually no other news organization — including larger state outlets — published the photograph.

It was not necessary for responsible reporting, and its use was not neutral. Rather, it resembled the sort of needlessly provocative editorial choice associated with street-side tabloids, not established journalism.

The editorial also emphasizes that the image was widely available online. But by running the photograph, the paper ensured it is now permanently available and tied to this scandal in public archives and search results.

What the family might once have quietly removed is now indelibly linked to your article.

Finally, the editorial suggests that publishing the photo acknowledges the family and encourages sympathy for them.

It is difficult to imagine the family agrees. In fact, what struck many readers on seeing the image was not sympathy over the alleged conduct but rather sympathy over the publication’s lack of sensitivity.

One wonders whether the same decision would have been made had the photograph involved the family of someone in the newsroom.

To be clear, I am gutted for the alleged victim and her family. Nothing demands greater moral urgency than the protection of children.

This is a painful story, and the paper did not create the pain. But this decision compounds it. Responsible journalism informs the public, but it also exercises restraint when the innocent are caught in someone else’s wreckage.

Cameron Fair
Maple Grove, Minnesota