Orono man upset about boy using girls' restroom {Bigotry}

[MaryEllen]

This article was in yesterdays edition of the Bangor Daily News. One of Maine's major newspapers.
If anyone would like to send a comment to the newspaper, there is a link to do so at the bottom of the article page.

Orono man upset about boy using girls' restroom
By Aimee Dolloff
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - Bangor Daily News

http://bangornews.com/news/t/city.aspx?articleid=157940&zoneid=176

[Hazumu]

Greetings;

It appears that this 'breaking' news story is very one-sided, and is basically about Mr. Melanson being upset at the school's handling of a transgendered child.  There appears to be no other voice to this story other than that of Mr. Melanson and his religious fundamentalist allies.

Transgenderism is just as much a birth defect as the ad featuring the cleft-palate little girl that appeared with the story when I accessed the Bangor Daily News webpage.

The fundamentalists smell blood and are gearing up their noise machine.  Please put some balance into this story.  Find some Subject Matter Experts on the subject of transgenderism.  I suggest Mara Keisling at the National Center for Transgender Equality and Marti Abernathy of Transadvocate.com for starters.

Children do NOT make this choice lightly.  They are not 'confused'.  They are, however, highly vulnerable from abuse by those trying to 'set them straight.'  Please give voice to all sides of this issue, especially that of the transgendered child.

Sincerely;

Karen J. Savage, SFC USA (ret.)
Military Broadcaster/Journalist

Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:10:56 -0800 103 of 105     
From: "Jim Morris" <jmorris@wabi.tv>     
Subject: Re: Fwd: Transgender Controversy at Orono Middle School.
To: ksavage@
   
Dear Karen,

The story we aired is of a topic that is surely multi-faceted. Our
coverage the other night was not overly comprehensive. It wasn't intended
to be.

We simply showed up at a school board meeting where a policy was
challenged in a very public way. It's an issue that has a lot of people
talking in that community. Doubtless, with our coverage, it will generate
more discussion. Perhaps this is a good thing. But it's not the news
media's role to judge that.

We solicited opinions from school officials. They responded with very
little information. The issue at stake had to do with non-discrimination
law and with the school board's policy. We feel that's very newsworthy.

As to the child at the core of the controversy, and that child's family,
we certainly don't want to add to any anxiety or unpleasantness that might
already exist. We're not into exploitation or sensationalism. The parties
involved did not want to reveal the family's identity. We respect that and
left them out of it. Should the family want to share their side, we'll be
all ears.

We endeavor to provide balanced, objective coverage of issues of interest
to our viewers. Ideally, all sides of every issue would be represented.
That requires the participation of folks representing the various sides.
That doesn't always happen. But we can't force folks to participate, all
we can do is offer the chance. Often more all-inclusive participation
emerges after we've aired the initial story. Maybe that will happen in
this case.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Jim Morris
News Director

[NicholeW.]

Did this guy really say that?

"What our viewers want to see?' Come now, Mr. Morris. Did they want to see that before or after your news story and who tipped you to cover the school board meeting and what sort of discussions did your direction board have about what bleeds or maybe does leads or at least gets covered.

I think media play important roles, but I think they all too often make this 'objective' bs objection to their innocence and ignore the fact that many of us know that what they can sell time for and raise the price for they will cover/

Is it sweeps? Ther's a lot that goes into even local news in Bangor ME that plays much the same way no matter where ya are: LA, NYC, Bangor.

I can see the family not raising a stink and making displays of themselves. But sometimes objective means also airing some facts instead of just the 'facts' of those who told ya what was going on in the first place.

And in 'innocently covering the news' I happened to stir a mob? Come on. Integrity and some sense of moral obligation need to be part of the decision-making process of what to cover and what to air. They have what 2-2 1/2 hours of local news programming slotted into endless network and reruns of Gomer Pyle, Gilligans Island and ET?