To: letters@reviewjournal.com
From: "Glenn Campbell" <glenn at aliensonearth.com>
Subject: 8/31 article, "Bystanders fume over child left in car"
Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 09:59:12 -0700 (PDT)


To the Editor:

As a fan of good journalism, I am profoundly disturbed by
Lisa Bach's 8/31 article, "Bystanders fume over child left
in car."  A man leaves a 6-year-old boy in an idling car for
12 minutes. Unquestionably, this is bad judgment on his
part, but I also question the judgment of the reporter and
editors who produced this story.

The most disturbing clue is in the sequence of photos that
accompany the article. At 3:00 pm, we see a man leaving
his parked SUV, which is said to have a child in it.  At
3:12, he is seen returning.  My question is, how did the R-J
photographer get that first shot?  How did he know, at that
moment, that the man had a child in the car (behind "darkly
tinted glass") and that he would leave him unattended for an
extended period?  It doesn't make sense.

Authorities were alerted to the child by an "observer" who
the article does not identify.  In journalism-speak, this
word often refers to the reporter herself.  What follows was
a massive overreaction by police and firefighters, which
would have never happened had the observer not intervened.
This gives the reporter a news story and lets her interview
bystanders and experts about the incident.

A 6-year-old is not a helpless infant.  He shouldn't have
been left alone, but he is not completely vulnerable, and
many harried parents would sympathize with the man's
position. The reporter acknowledges, deep within the
article, that the car's air conditioner was on, but only
after writing at length about the dangers of leaving
children in hot cars.

What is really going on here?  From the evidence presented,
it seems that a reporter and photographer are staking out
the courthouse district looking for a story, and when one
doesn't materialize, they make it themselves. This is
"manufactured news" at its worst, and it does not represent
the high level of integrity that we have come to expect from
the R-J.

GLENN CAMPBELL
Las Vegas