{"id":7721,"date":"2013-09-22T11:37:08","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T15:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=7721"},"modified":"2013-09-22T11:40:21","modified_gmt":"2013-09-22T15:40:21","slug":"the-tricky-issue-of-the-casd-texts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=7721","title":{"rendered":"The tricky issue of the CASD texts"},"content":{"rendered":"

You have a right to know why we aren’t publishing the alleged school district texts<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, The Times<\/span><\/em><\/span>
\n\"UTMikeColLogo\"<\/a>We get letters \u2014 or more correctly, it being the 21st Century, we get emails.<\/p>\n

Many of late have asked us to keep publishing stories on the Coatesville Area School District and the resignation of Superintendent of Schools Richard Como and Coatesville Area High School Athletic Director James Donato.<\/p>\n

We really appreciate your thoughts and comments, your continued encouragement and private emails and calls with information to help us report this story \u2014 we can\u2019t thank you enough for your support and input, it\u2019s an editor\u2019s dream to have that sort of relationship with a community.<\/p>\n

And yes, we\u2019re aware of the story in The Daily Local News<\/em> today which publishes excerpts of alleged text messages between school administrators. And while the DLN feels they have enough sourcing and documentation to publish the excerpts, I don’t feel we’ve reached that threshold for The Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Maybe it is because they have better sources; maybe its because the folks working the story for the DLN have less months experience as professional journalists than our team has years experience (ironic that the \u201cnew media\u201d folks would be the old-school journalists with decades of experience and that the unproven kids would be at the corporate \u201cold media” outlet, I guess).<\/p>\n

Look, there\u2019s a high probability that what was published today is correct \u2014 and if so, basically, the entire school board needs to resign \u2014 we\u2019ve been told many of the same things. But maybe because I was a cub reporter, bureau chief and editor in the 1980s (ironically, again, at a previous version of the company that owns the DLN) and was taught by grizzled veterans who came up in the 1950s, there\u2019s too much supposition, too much false information out there for me to feel like what we have right now should be published.<\/p>\n

And this has to be done right. As we feel strongly that there is more to come, much more, to be honest, we have to strive every day to get it dead right. One missed step, one rush to judgment here and we\u2019ll lose creditability and trust. Maybe more importantly,\u00a0 fairness matters, too.<\/p>\n

The texts quoted today in the DLN contain terrible, awful comments. And yes, the phone numbers do match known phone numbers of CASD administrators \u2014 more than just the two who resigned. Publish this and be wrong, and careers are permanently ruined.<\/p>\n

So it has to be absolutely confirmed.<\/p>\n

But, while we trust the source that supplied them, we can\u2019t absolutely vouch for their authenticity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too easy to just create something like that \u2014 and even if the source that provided them to us has every reason to think they are legitimate, we need to see what they call in the justice system, a chain of custody, proof of the original source and proof that it wasn\u2019t altered between then and our getting it. I\u2019ve been provided fake documents in the past on other stories \u2014 only care and prudence kept me from publishing really wrong stuff.<\/p>\n

If the DLN got that, hats off to them.<\/p>\n

It would be highly irresponsible to run it, though, without that, as first, it would inflame a community already angry and on-edge and second, be potentially damaging to those implicated, should down the road the document prove to be manufactured.<\/p>\n

But again, whatever your take on this issue, a lot of the blame falls on the school board and administration here, which has stonewalled the media (when not blaming it) and the public when it rightfully asks questions. And yes, with each passing day, it becomes more and more apparent that at various times in recent weeks members of the administration and school board have less than honest with us in discussion what they knew and when.<\/p>\n

Clearly, our Right To Know requests have been stonewalled without legal merit, begging litigation, which we will likely be forced, unfortunately, to undertake in the coming weeks. I met with our attorney Friday to discuss our plan of action and should have more to report on that in the coming days.<\/p>\n

Which, of course, leads to the question of why? What are they hiding, what are they covering up for?<\/p>\n

And as much as the texting issue \u2014 if accurate \u2014 is reprehensible, the answers to those questions may prove shocking.<\/p>\n

We will be there to keep asking those questions, we hope you will be, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You have a right to know why we aren’t publishing the alleged school district texts By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times We get letters \u2014 or more correctly, it being the 21st Century, we get emails. Many of late have asked us to keep publishing stories on the Coatesville Area School District and the resignation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[29,2844,2843,30,2842],"class_list":["post-7721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-featured","tag-coatesville-area-school-district","tag-community-input","tag-journalism","tag-school-board","tag-texting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}