pulling misused images of a child off the Internet

How would you react if you learned that pictures of your kids were available on child porn websites? Most of us would be desperate to stop the abuse, desperate to find out who the abuser is, and desperate to pull those photos from the Internet.

Here is the story of a mother chasing down photos of her daughter, photos that were not pornographic. The little girl was photographed with Hillary Clinton and Clinton opponents turned the photo into a meme that included statements the mother didn't want associated with her daughter. The mother fought back against what she saw as offensive use of her daughter's image.

...more than a year later — the day after Clinton lost the election and as Jones was processing her own grief over the loss — their treasured photo was turned into something sinister. Someone had taken the photo, originally uploaded to the Clinton campaign Flickr page, and turned it into a meme that was then shared thousands of times across social media. 

Bold white type across the top of the image read, “I AM FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS!” Then halfway down, text covering the lower half of Sullivan’s body accused Clinton of accepting money and refugees from countries “that would mutilate this girl’s genitals, marry her to a Muslim pedophile, and stone her to death if she doesn’t wear a bedsheet.”

The message turned the little girl's picture into something ugly and by the time her mother realized how it had been used, much time had passed.

...she searched for the photo online and found thousands of blogs and feeds on Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook that shared the image. She believed what she’d always been told: Once something is on the Internet, it’s there forever.

“I felt like I failed her,” Jones said. “As a mother, your job is to protect and fix things, and I wasn’t able to fix it. I’ve never felt so low in my life with this image being out there that I had no control over.”

Parents who learn that a pornographic image of their child is available on the Internet surely feel a similar helplessness.

She traced one photo to a Facebook page, “Men for Donald Trump,” which has more than 200,000 followers. She implored them to take it down. At first they resisted, but after dozens of her friends bombarded them with messages, they obliged. It was a victory, but a small one. That was only one site. There were countless more. Was it even possible to go to each one and make the same request?

If a parent tried to search out pornographic images of his or her child, the parent would be committing the crime of downloading child pornography.

Several days later, she posted about it on Pantsuit Nation, the Facebook group of more than 3 million that started as a secret pro-Clinton page and has morphed into a massive online community where people share stories and seek support. Jones asked if they could help her report the image one-by-one. 

Imagine asking millions of people to help you find images of your child on child porn websites. How quickly do you think law enforcement would be at your door?

Soon messages poured into her inbox offering help. This person knew someone at Pinterest who could help; another had a contact at the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Then she got a message from Shaun Kozolchyk, the San Francisco director of development for the Anti-Defamation League. 

“I am a mother of my own two daughters. I was so horrified and deeply affected by that post and knew the work we do at ADL could be a space that could be helpful,” Kozolchyk said. 

She contacted a colleague who works on cyber-hate response issues, who immediately verified that the Clinton campaign held the copyright to that photo. Any unauthorized use of it was against the law. The ADL sent a take-down notice to the originating sites and, soon after, it disappeared from the Internet.

What a relief that must be--a relief that parents of children in child porn images will not feel. After a child porn user is arrested, the child porn images are still available. When child porn sites are discovered, law enforcement may not shut it down immediately, allowing users to continue downloading images.

“When I got all this response from all these people from all over the country, it’s going to sound cheesy, but it felt like this giant blue blanket of love wrapped over me, and I didn’t feel alone anymore,” Jones said. “There were so many people, who said, ‘we got you.’” 

But what happened next gives Jones reason to believe her fight had a wider cause. When she shared again on Pantsuit Nation what the ADL had been able to do, others started coming forward saying their child’s image had been used in a meme. They just didn’t think there was anything they could do about it.

This mom is spreading hope to other parents who want to fight back against those who misuse images of their children. Parents who want to do the same with pornographic images of their child are out of luck. No hope for them.

Child porn laws prevent parents from stopping the dissemination of images of their children. The images, which may be the only evidence of child sex abuse crimes, are driven underground, making it harder to find them and harder to identify who created the images. Children who are abused for porn production are left with no protection, no giant blue blanket of love, no one who says we got you.

The laws concentrate on punishing those who would use child porn; the lawmakers ignore the dangerous consequences of driving the images underground.

Which is more offensive? The knowledge that someone is using the images for sexual gratification or the knowledge that someone is abusing a child?

What awful helplessness is caused by well-meaning laws.


Related, a post from October 2013: when embarrassing pictures go viral

struck down: Wisconsin law violated free speech rights of registered sex offenders

Sex offenders, cameras, children. The combination has been harmful when the resulting photos are pornographic. When the photos are not pornographic?

A Wisconsin law prohibiting registered sex offenders from photographing children in public violates their right to free speech, the state Court of Appeals held Tuesday. 

The decision by the Wausau-based District 3 court reversed the conviction of a 44-year-old Green Bay man who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for the non-pornographic photos. It also found the law unconstitutional on its face, not salvageable by a narrowed interpretation or severing part of the statute.

The guy took pictures of kids playing outside.

[...pictures] of children outside his residence doing things like riding skateboards, jumping rope and dropping stones in a soda bottle. None involved nudity or obscenity.

In case you missed it, the guy got twelve years in prison for that.

In an opinion written by Reserve Judge Thomas Cane, and joined by judges Lisa Stark and Thomas Hruz, the court found that even sex offenders have free speech rights to take non-obscene, non-pornographic photographs of children in public places.

...even sex offenders have free speech rights...

While protecting children is such an interest, the court said, the law doesn't accomplish that. In fact, it could actually encourage offenders to make personal contact with children, in order to ask who their parents are so the offender might ask permission to take the photos. 

"Further, children are not harmed by non-obscene, non-pornographic photographs taken in public places," the court said.

Common sense truth-telling.

The court said it does not like the idea that some people might gain sexual gratification from ordinary photos of children, but that laws can't ban protected speech just because it might lead to crime.

If gaining sexual gratification from photos were a crime, Victoria's Secret and Pink catalogs have surely led many astray.

Prohibiting registered citizens from photographing children means no photos of homeruns, dance solos, and no photos of baby's first (or hundredth) time down the playground slide.

As usual, legislators were not thinking of families or the importance of normal family activities to someone returning from prison. Family connection is one of the factors that help registered citizens avoid new offenses of any kind.

I do not know how many other states prohibit RSOs from taking photos of children. This Wisconsin victory gives hope.

Sex offenders have the right to free speech.

Naturally. 

producing child pornography; you'll be surprised how easy it is

A lower court threw out charges of child porn production against a 17-year-old Michigan boy who downloaded child porn. Circuit Court Judge Mark Trusock reinstated those charges.

The kid did not photograph or record sexual images of children so how did the judge decide that the kid should be charged with production?

The judge bought the prosecution's argument that...

...because [the boy] moved the images from his screen delivered by an Internet server onto his hard drive, he was guilty of producing child porn.

Think what that means.

It means that by reading this blog post--which downloads it to your hard drive--you have produced it.

This blogger begs to differ.

The rest of the story is that the boy is also in trouble for making violent threats against people at his school. For the sake of argument, let's say that the kid was making actual plans to hurt people at his school.

His sentence for actual threats of physical violence against people within his reach could possibly be shorter than his sentence for downloading illegal images if he spends any time on the sex offender registry.

so much judgment about the Willow Smith/Moises Arias photo...with so little cause

Recently, a photo of a 13-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man went viral and stirred up controversy because of the age difference between the two. The girl is Willow Smith, daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith; the young man is Moises Arias, an actor and friend of the Smith family. In the photo, the two are on a bed. He is shirtless, sitting up. She is lying across the bed. The two are not touching.

Michel Martin, of the NPR program Tell Me More, talked to a few people about the photo. You can see the photo at the link.

Leslie Morgan Steiner, author of The Baby Chase: How Surrogacy Is Transforming the American Family, said:

But he's 20 and she's 13. And I tell you, my parenting head would explode if my 15-year-old daughter or my 12-year-old daughter were found in a bed anywhere, anytime with a shirtless 20-year-old man. And if I discovered my 17-year-old son with a girl six years younger, I would be beyond furious.

Phil Lerman, author of Dadditude: How a Real Man Became a Real Dad, said:

If you're OK with your kid, at 13 years old, lying around on a bed with a 20-year-old guy, then God bless you and good luck to you. We have so many stories on "America's Most Wanted," thousands of stories of child molesters and pedophiles. Stories that started out with - it seemed like such an innocent relationship.

So there you have the Chicken Little reactions to the photo. A 13-year-old is lying on the same bed that a 20-year-old shirtless man is sitting on. There is no context given for the photo, no way to guess what was going on before or after the photo was taken...and yet Steiner says her head would explode and the photo makes Lerman think of child molesters and pedophiles. 

My own reaction to the photo? I don't understand why there was a fuss at all about the photo. I do not think that a man without a shirt means sex. I do not think that a young girl next to an older man means sex. I do not think that the photo is evidence of anything untoward. If I were there and I knew what really was going on, perhaps I might be more (or less!) exercised about it.

Jada Pinkett-Smith, Willow's mother, said something we should all listen to:

There was nothing sexual about that picture or that situation. You guys are projecting your trash onto it. And you're acting like covert pedophiles and that's not cool.

I love her recognition that the people making a fuss are the ones thinking about sex when they see the 13-year-old.

Definitely not cool.

truths about--and consequences for--teenagers

In Barrington IL, school administrators and parents are trying to teach students not to share pornographic images. Pornographic images were shared--via text messages--among a large number of students. At that time, the images were deleted from all the phones but another incident occurred recently and may result in a couple of students being charged with felonies because the images are considered child porn.

...although middle and high school students are “regularly taught about safe online behaviors,” the district is considering introducing “age-appropriate lessons” on sexting in upper elementary grades.

Will those lessons about sexting go the way of the DARE program?

DARE is very popular with students, school administrators, police, and the general public. This, in spite of the fact that research over the decades has repeatedly demonstrated that DARE is not only ineffective, but also sometimes counterproductive. That is, students who graduate from DARE are sometimes more likely than others to drink or do drugs.

Kids get frequent warnings about the dangers of sharing too much on the Internet. A current Facebook stunt is to post a picture and ask people to 'like' it; the goal is to show kids how far and fast a picture will travel via social media. Because posting an indiscreet selfie can embarrass you far, far away and very, very soon.

Teaching kids why they shouldn't share too much information, while certainly not pointless, is ineffective, as are many lessons we deliver about personal safety. One night, a group of high schoolers around our kitchen table all shared the codes that opens the garage doors at their homes, laughing about the warnings their parents had given them. They have all been told not to share that information but they did it anyway. At that age, very little bad has happened to them and they cannot conceive the unexpected hairpin turns ahead in their lives.

Telling them they shouldn't drink is a lesson they will understand and then ignore. Not every kid, of course. Some will absorb the lesson and follow the recommended course of action, "just say no". Many kids don't drink booze, have sex, or smoke. 

Many more do, though. They have all heard the advice to stay away from booze/pot/sex/etc. and they decide to try it anyway. They know the dangers of drunk driving, STDs, and drug overdoses. They know they could be arrested for drunk driving or for having illegal substances in their possession. They may even be aware that sex with the wrong partner could have lifelong consequences for one or both partners. They do not think it will happen to them.

They will still drink booze, smoke cigarettes or pot, and have sex. All that knowledge, all those warnings...for nothing?

Probably not for nothing. At some point, kids grow up and those lessons take hold. Many grownups look back to their foolish days and shake their heads. What were we thinking?

The same thing will happen with advice not to share excessively on social media, not to take suggestive or nude selfies, not to pull out the iPhone and record that couple doing naughty things in the corner. Kids hear the advice, they understand some of the dangers...and then they do it anyway.

The question isn't will they or won't they; they question is what should happen when they do?

If we charge kids with felonies, do we honestly think that will keep other kids from sharing naughty pictures? All our lessons about drugs and booze and sex have not stopped kids from drinking, smoking, and having sex. Why would we think we can control a new kind of foolishness?

Advice for the Barrington students includes:

If a person forwards a sexual image of someone underage, that recipient is as responsible for that image as the original sender. A distributor could face child pornography charges, go to jail and be required to register as a sex offender.

Is that really what we want to happen to our students? Do we really want them to be on the sex offender registry (for life, in some states) for foolishness? Child pornography includes images that are shared freely and willingly by the teens themselves. Do we really want the default reaction to be to charge them with a crime? 

We need to look at our criminal laws and decide if it makes sense to insist that foolishness is criminal since that particular kind of foolishness--indiscreet sharing--is not going away anytime soon, no matter how many times we tell kids it is a bad idea.

Computers, laptops, tablets, video game consoles, cell phones...the opportunities for online hijinks are not diminishing. The number of kids who will end up on the registry and with a felony on their record will only increase.

To pretend that we can control what kids do online might be a worse foolishness.

false accusation up-ends life for Mankato coach, even after exoneration

In 2012, a Minnesota University-Mankato coach was arrested on suspicion of producing and possessing child pornography. About three months later, the charges were dropped. End of story? Not quite.

Twenty days after the charges were dropped, the coach was suspended for viewing pornography on a university computer and for letting his wife use his work computer. After the suspension, he was reassigned to an administrative position and ultimately fired.

Months later after the coach found another job, an arbitrator held that the firing was not justified. More than one person used the computer so they couldn't know who downloaded porn. The arbitrator also said that the wife probably shouldn't have used the computer but no one should be fired because she did.

The facts of the story are simple. The effect of the original charges on the coach's life are complicated.

John Harrington, a longtime Mankato resident and Minnesota State-Mankato booster, told USA TODAY Sports at the time: "The damage is done. His reputation is tainted. On the tip of everybody's tongue is 'Sandusky.' "

After the charges were dropped, the coach was seen as tainted. He was wrongly accused and then exonerated but still seen as a possible child molester.

[The coach] says he and his wife ... are grateful for the support from the community. Dennis Hood, a longtime Minnesota State-Mankato booster and former president of the Touchdown Club, which serves as the fund-raising arm for the football program, was one of those. He says as people began to learn more about the charges, the reaction from many was, 'Golly, is this all there is?'" 

But Hood also says, "Right up until a couple of weeks ago (when the arbitrator ruled in Hoffner's favor), people were saying, 'There's got to be something. There's got to be something.' But there really wasn't."

This is what the current sex offender hysteria has wrought: unthinking emotional responses that have a facile power to ruin lives.

The laws that mandate reporting of illegal images and the hysteria around sex offenders have encouraged people to think of children in sexual terms. Instead of seeing videos of naked children playing (images found on the coach's phone), the technician who found and reported the videos thought of children and sex.

Do not think I am blaming the technician alone. Law enforcement looked at the videos. The prosecutor looked at the videos. Presumably, a grand jury also looked at the videos. 

At any one of those points, someone should have questioned if there was proof that this was child pornography instead of running with the case because, well, it could be.

At any one of those points, someone should have said, "Golly, is this all there is?"

Fortunately, the judge recognized kids' antics as kids' antics and dismissed the charges.

The coach spent a great deal of money defending himself and uprooted his family for another job. After the arbitrator found the firing unjustified, the coach has returned to his position at Minnesota University-Mankato. 

I have said it before, writing about another man cleared of his charges where the story ended horrifically: 

This is what comes of instilling a fear of sex offenders and pretending that all sex offenders are dangerous.

I will add that this is what comes of thinking that all pictures of naked children are pornographic. There was no need--at all--to put this coach and his family through the wringer for silly family videos.

Too bad for him, the laws make it all too easy to do just that.

man burned alive after being accused--and cleared!--of being a pedophile

In the UK,

A man wrongly accused of being a pedophile was beaten unconscious, set on fire, and killed by two neighborhood "vigilantes."  

Investigators say the brutal violence in the Bristol, England neighborhood appears to be the result of a vicious rumor mill and a misguided police investigation. 

According to the Daily Mail, 44-year-old Bijan Ebrahimi was arrested in July after being accused of taking "inappropriate" images of neighborhood children. 

But after an investigation, police determined that Ebrahimi was actually taking pictures of kids he suspected of vandalizing his prized garden. 

Despite being released by police with no charges, the Daily Mail reports that two neighborhood men decided to enact their own justice against the disabled Ebrahimi. 

Just two days after his release, Ebrahimi was viciously beaten by two 24-year-olds. The two suspects then dragged the unconscious Ebrahimi outside, where they set him on fire and killed him. (via http://sexoffenderissues.blogspot.com)

This is what comes of instilling a fear of sex offenders and pretending that all sex offenders are dangerous.

If you are one of those who thinks there is a need for a publicly available sex offender registry, you share responsibility for this man's death.

If you are one who thinks sex offenders are to be feared, you share responsibility for this man's death.

If you are one who doesn't question why we have a sex offender registry, you share responsibility for this man's death.

When we encourage an unreasoning fear--and that is what the registry does--vigilantism is a natural outcome. When we force hundreds of thousands of people to register, pretend they are dangerous, tell them where they can and cannot live, push them to the margins of society, it is a natural outcome that their lives will be in danger from vigilantes.

Shame on those who support the registry.

when embarrassing pictures go viral

In his comment on the arousal is not the crime post, Ethan included a link to a Salon article by a young woman who tells what it was like when a photo of her went viral.

Not just any photo. An embarrassing photo.

On Facebook, she had posted a photo of herself dressed as the sexy Lara Croft for Halloween. Unfortunately, she had neglected to check her Facebook privacy settings, leaving her photo open to the public. Someone saw the photo, re-posted it and then the re-postings snowballed. Cruel comments were posted wherever the photo was posted. And it was posted everywhere, it seemed.

So I laughed it all off at first — but then, I read the comments. 

“What a waste of space,” read one. Another: “Heifers like her should be put down.” Yet another said I should just kill myself “and spare everyone’s eyes.” Hundreds of hateful messages, most of them saying that I was a worthless human being and shaming me for having the audacity to go in public dressed as a sexy video game character. How dare I dress up and have a good time! 

We all know the awful humiliation of a person laughing at you. But that feeling increases tenfold when it seems like everyone is laughing at you. Scrolling through the comments, the world imploded — and took my heart with it.

LisaMoore commented after Ethan posted his link:

The Salon article is interesting and I showed it to my kids to reinforce not to put anything online that could be embarrassing. It is not the same as child porn pictures though. She was an adult.

True, the Lara Croft photo is not the same as child porn but there are similarities worth noting. She lost control of an image of herself, an image that she did not want the world to see. 

This must be a tiny slice of what it feels like to know that strangers on the internet are seeing, sharing, downloading photos of oneself in a sexual situation. For children, who were coerced or outright forced into sexual situations, to learn that there are photos of those experiences out there...I can't imagine what that must feel like. Embarrassment and humiliation must be the least of it.

This young woman, though, took action.

I called my friend Terri Jean, a photographer. She reminded me that I was beautiful, and told me I would get through this. And then, like any kick-ass heroines, we came up with a plan. [My emphasis.]

The photo was of her and she wanted as much control over it as she could get. She used her paralegal training and experience to fight back. She began contacting people who had shared it on Facebook and asked them to take down the post. Most of them were surprised to hear from her.

And of course, they hadn’t really thought of me as a person. Why should they? These images are throwaways, little bursts of amusement to get through a long workday. You look, you chuckle, you get some ridicule off your chest and move on to the next source of distraction. No one thought about the possibility that I might read those words. Far less, that I would talk back. 

Next, I began the monumental task of sending out copyright violation notices to the websites hosting the image — I would have to issue hundreds of them. My work as a paralegal had given me some training in this regard, but it was tedious, like pulling weeds out of the planet’s largest garden. I had to seek out each instance of the image and sift around until I could find contact information. 

No wonder this woman chose Lara Croft for her Halloween costume! She and Lara are both determined, resourceful, and smart.

The story for child pornography images is different. The law does not allow people to fight back the way this young woman did. Parents who want to remove images of their children from the Internet or children, now adults, who want to track down their own images--what can they do? 

If families go looking for child porn images, even with the purpose of fighting back the way this young woman did, they are likely to end up in trouble with the law. If an adult finds the pornographic image of herself as a child, she will herself commit the crime of possessing it.

Because the images are illegal, the websites on which they are available are driven far underground, making the job of tracking much more difficult.

If you are thinking--But the woman in the Lara Croft costume wasn't able to remove the images from the internet. She lost the fight!--I cannot argue with that. There is no way for her to remove all the images of her from the Internet. Ultimately, she did lose but not without putting up a fight, and not without making some of her tormentors aware of what they were doing. Being able to fight back felt good.

The children in child porn images never have the opportunity to fight back. Law enforcement is not trying to remove the images from the internet. No one is trying to confront those who re-posted the images to ask, "Why are you posting pictures of me?" The children are left with the possibility of receiving court-ordered restitution payments with which they can afford therapy. 

Is therapy the best we can do? What if fighting back would do more good than therapy or if it would make therapy a little less necessary? 

Reading this woman's story makes me see how powerful she felt when she found a way to fight back.

And while my self-confidence took a large blow from the experience, I’m getting over it. My photographer friend Terri did a photo shoot with me after it all went down. She’s a retro pinup photographer, and I’ve been posing for her for a while now, but that particular shoot felt great. Just to be seen a little bit more as I wanted to be.

But I refuse to disappear. I still go jogging in public. I don’t hide my flabby arms or chubby ankles for fear of offending someone else’s delicate sensibilities. I dress in a way that makes me happy with myself. And this Halloween, I’m thinking of reprising my role as Lara Croft just to give all the haters the middle finger.

Criminalizing child porn denies its victims the chance to fight back. Instead, they are in limbo, waiting for law enforcement to punish the people who downloaded the images. 

Waiting for someone else to do something. They aren't even waiting for someone to save them because that's not going to happen. They are stuck waiting for something to happen which doesn't affect them much at all. Arresting people for possession doesn't rid the Internet of the images, nor does it give the child (or family) any control over, well, anything.

They are relegated to the role of victim, a role some refuse to let them abandon. Tom Joad is not the only commenter to think once a victim, always a victim:

 I don't care if the image is two days old or twenty years old...that little child was still the victim of a terrible crime and continue to be a victim!!!

Some people seem to like the idea that children in child porn images will never be able to recover from the experience. Those children are not all alike. They each have their own way of recovering from bad experiences. Some of them would certainly prefer to be able to take action.

Do I really want child porn images popping up on my Facebook news feed? Certainly not. Society has a very strong taboo on sex with children and anyone who dared to post something like that would immediately come under fire from those who know how wrong it is. Wouldn't you protest? Wouldn't you demand that your Facebook friend remove the image? Wouldn't you do something to help any child you might recognize in the images? 

I hope it would work like that, though perhaps I am wrong and the world would come to accept the images. Would you? Freedom poses difficult problems. 

Would decriminalizing child porn create more viewers? I don't know. There seems to be no shortage of new viewers even though it is illegal now. Again, freedom poses difficult problems.

The thought of victims prevented from fighting back is painful. 

Would every family or child want to do what this woman did? Probably not. But for those who have a heart for the battle and who want to feel the power surge that comes with fighting back, why make it impossible for them to do that?

bus driver accused of doing what??

A Des Moines Register news item shows what happens when fear takes hold:

A male school bus driver was pulled from his route in the Waukee [IA] district last week after he took a group picture of students, and asked two girls to pass along his contact information to their teachers, a district official said. 

Parents of the girls notified the district because they were concerned the driver wrote down his phone number and email on a piece of paper and handed it to the students last Thursday, said Waukee Superintendent David Wilkerson.

Scary business, asking kids to hand a piece of paper to their teachers. And the photo! He took a photo of the kids!

The photo taken by the driver was of all students on the bus holding up their index fingers to indicate they were “number one,” he said.

That is suspicious...if you have a wild imagination.

It certainly wasn't criminal; I don't see how it was even frightening. Perhaps the bus company or the school have guidelines that the man violated. Do not hand paper to students. The article doesn't say.

One of two things is true: the children or the parents saw something ordinary as creepy or the bus driver was creepy. Neither one seems reason to call authorities. Some children have wild imaginations. Some people give off a creepy vibe. The article mentions no illegal acts and yet the video from the two cameras on the bus has been handed over to law enforcement for investigation.

Being creepy is not illegal. The fact that some people behave in unusual ways is reason for parents to educate their kids on how to be kind and courteous to strange people. Any parent who has a child who exhibits unusual social behaviors must worry that those children will be seen as "creepy", now that "creepy" seems to be reason for investigation.

This man is being investigated for very ordinary behavior. The bus company and school, by going to law enforcement, are encouraging us to see danger in ordinary behavior.

Fear permeates this story--fear that someone who acts in inappropriate ways is going to be a danger to children, and fear that children who encounter that person will be unable to handle the situation.

Why did the parents and school district have so little faith in the ability of their kids to handle the situation? The kids did tell their parents, after all. Isn't that what we want them to do if they encounter something that frightens them?

The very fact that a story like this is in the newspaper tells us something: the newspaper thinks a man acting inappropriately--though not criminally--is newsworthy. Why is that? Because fear-mongering sells newspapers.

The assumption seems to be that the man could have been dangerous, though the article doesn't tell us why we should think that. He didn't ask the kids to contact him; he asked them to pass a message to their teacher.

Wilkerson said it appears the driver intended to set up a “pen pal correspondence” with students in Tennessee, where the driver has a regular route. 

Pen pals! That practice used to be seen as a good thing. Not so long ago, the beloved Weekly Reader encouraged schoolchildren to write to servicemen overseas. You read that right: children were encouraged to write to adult servicemen and women. Stranger danger, anyone?

Until the news media rely on fact and common sense instead of strumming the chord of unreasoning fear, stories that generate fear and suspicion will continue to get attention. 

If only bus companies would do a background check on their drivers; surely that would eliminate problems like this. Wait. What's this?

Officials in Waukee and Ames said all bus drivers have passed background checks.

Even the ubiquitous background check cannot prevent bus drivers behaving in ordinary ways from drawing the attention of law enforcement.

Anyone who is on the sex offender registry or has a family member on the registry understands what lies under the surface of this story: 

Innocuous behavior can be interpreted in the worst possible way.

The innocent can be accused. 

9/11 and The Falling Man

Today is the anniversary of 9/11. I didn't have a post ready for today and then I read Esquire's article on the famous Falling Man photograph from that terrible day and decided to post a link to that.

Tom Junod explores the treatment of The Falling Man photo in particular and photos of terrible events in general. Richard Drew took photos of people jumping from the towers and the Falling Man was published in newspapers all over the world on September 12. A horrified country demanded an end to publishing or airing those images out of respect for those who jumped and their families.

I have no comment except read it. The article is quite long but well worth the time.