Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Five W’s and an H

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I have always been interest in journalism, which is why I took journalism classes in both high school and college. I was an opinion columnist and copy editor for the Liberty High School Sentinel for a year, and am only a few credits short of an Electronic Journalism minor from George Mason University. I have not worked professionally in a journalistic field, but bits and pieces of my journalism education have stuck with me. I know, from my own experience, that the ‘Five W’s and an H‘ are among the first things that journalism students learn in their first year.

What are the five W’s and H, you ask? They are a reminder to writers that every news story should answer at least six basic questions (when applicable): Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

Let’s do an experiment with a local Associated Press story hosted on WTOP.com: 7 Children Hurt in Fairfax Co. School Bus Accident.

  • Who? Looks like 7 anonymous students in an unnamed ‘summer program’ and an unnamed 18 year old driver. I’ll give them a half-point, but they should have been a lot more detailed about who these students were and, most importantly, they should have named the driver of the SUV.
  • What? School Bus vs. SUV accident. One point!
  • When? 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday. One point!
  • Where? Well, the title says ‘Fairfax Co[unty]’ and the dateline says ‘Vienna, VA’ . . . but the story itself doesn’t mention a location at all. No street name, no intersection, no neighborhood. Zero points.
  • Why? Um, good question. All it really says is that police cited the driver of the SUV for ‘failure to yield’, but that’s not much of a ‘why’. Acceptable statements would have been something like ‘police believe the driver was [drunk/distracted/making a right turn in front of the bus/running a red light/etc.]. Zero points.
  • How? No explanation of the severity of the accident or anything about how it happened. Zero points.

The Associated Press gets 2.5 points out of 6 . . . that’s a score of 41.6 percent, which is an F in any journalism class I ever took. WTOP.com gets a dishonorable mention for running the story on their site in such a sorry, unfinished state without a good reason (this kind of half-story would be acceptable as a placeholder during a major, breaking story while a more full story is being written).

Punishing the Good Samaritan (Updated)

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I have the absolute highest respect for our public safety officials, including our police officers, when they aren’t abusing their power. In my experience, most people who choose a life of service in the military, police, or fire services are fine, dedicated professionals.

There are, however, plenty of exceptions. I’ve run into a couple ‘power trip’ cops now and then—yelling at citizens for no reason, lying in wait to catch people committing minor, inconsequential traffic violations, etc. Unfortunately, it would seem that one of Fairfax County’s finest thought it was an appropriate decision to yell at and ticket a man for stopping traffic on a major thoroughfare to keep people from plowing at 55 miles-per-hour into a group of geese that were crossing the road. The officer cited the Good Samaritan who likely helped save some geese and prevent accidents (geese are bigger and more damaging than they look) for, I kid you not, jaywalking. According to one police officer, Mr. Jozsef Vamosi should simply have called police instead of taking matters into his own hands.

Of course, by the time police likely would have arrived, the geese would have been dead and somebody’s car would have been seriously damaged. One can argue that Vamosi shouldn’t have risked his safety to stop traffic for a minute to permit the geese to cross safely, but he certainly committed no crime. Virginia law prohibits people from ‘carelessly or maliciously’ stopping traffic. Vamosi’s actions were not careless or malicious. Indeed, a police officer on the scene likely would have done the exact same thing Vamosi did.

People have the right to perform public safety tasks until officials arrive. You can fight a fire with your extinguisher until firefighters arrive; you can perform chest compressions on a cardiac arrest victim until EMTs arrive; and you can hold a burglar at gun-point—or stop traffic to prevent a possibly serious accident—until police arrive. Maybe you or I, as non-professionals, won’t always make the right decisions in these situations, but we cannot be faulted for making an honest attempt to do the right thing.

Updated 8/4/2009: Vamosi, assuming he stays out of trouble for six months, will have these ludicrous charges dropped. His day in court was yesterday.

Frivolous Lawsuit of the Day

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I have seen plenty of frivolous lawsuits over the years, but our litigious society still hasn’t run out of new ways to waste courtroom time and taxpayer dollars. In this case, a woman in New York City is suing Monroe College for $70,000 because she can’t find a job and wants her tuition refunded.

According to the suit, the school’s career office failed to provide Trina Thompson with career advice and job placement. Of course, there are a few questions we don’t have the answers to: Did Thompson ask for career advice and leads? She might have. Did the school guarantee successful job placement? I can pretty much guarantee they didn’t.

Even if both Thompson and the school worked their butts off there’s no guarantee that Thompson would find a job within any particular length of time in a down economy. Furthermore, even if the school slacked completely they are under no legal obligation to find Thompson a job and (assuming the school is properly accredited) it’s pretty ludicrous for Thompson to claim she is entitled to a full refund of $70,000 in tuition for her degree. The degree has value, so even if the case had any merit (it doesn’t) she would only be entitled to a partial refund.

Of course, since the case has no merit whatsoever, Thompson is entitled to nothing (and should be made to reimburse all court costs, both to Monroe College and the taxpayers).

ADHD: A Symptom of Bad Schools?

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As my grades slipped and my behavior worsened in 5th and 6th grades, I got to meet with a number of doctors and psychiatric professionals and was ultimately diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and prescribed methylphenidate—commonly known as Ritalin. For several years, the drug was part of my daily routine and it was, indeed, pretty effective. While on Ritalin, I had a much easier time focusing in school.

I stopped taking the drug by some time in 8th or 9th grade because I became frustrated with its side effects, particularly a feeling that it hampered my creativity and changed my personality. Eventually I was able to find a happy-medium somewhere between intent focus and freewheeling daydreams (and between A’s and D’s on my report cards). I was reminded of this chapter of my life when I read on CNN.com about a young girl who stopped taking the drug on her own initiative for basically the same reasons I did.

To this day, I believe that ADHD is over-diagnosed and Ritalin is over-prescribed even in legitimate cases of ADHD. I’m not the only one with this opinion. The vast majority of supposed ADHD cases—including, I believe, my own—are merely a manifestation of creativity and intelligence. Being easily bored in boring situations isn’t a disorder.

Read more . . .

Bathroom Chairpile

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bathroom-chairpileWhile I was at the church for Eucharistic Adoration, I made a quick pit-stop before heading into the chapel. To my surprise, the men’s room was full of chairs . . . lots of them . . . stacked.

I am assuming that they were put there to be out of the way for Vacation Bible School, which is under-way this week, but I found it funny. One doesn’t expect tens of chairs to be stacked in the men’s room.

Of course, as you can see, there’s plenty of room so it’s actually pretty logical. After all, the adoration chapel next door used to be a storage room (I think) and may well have been where chairs used to be stacked when they needed to be out of the way. I’m not really sure though . . . I’m still new!

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.