5 ms·

> This makes my blood boil. It's supposed to. This is Reason's schtick, publishing click magnets about terrible overreach by our evil Big Government Overlords

by ajross 4y ago

> This makes my blood boil. It's supposed to. This is Reason's schtick, publishing click magnets about terrible overreach by our evil Big Government Overlords, and you need to give this publication a ton of salt if you read it. Like start out by noticing that this isn't journalism. It's written by Lenore Skenazy "president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement." Quite literally this is an evangelism and fundraising piece by a charity that benefits from exactly the outrage it's trying to drive. If the guy was arrested, where's a link to the records? Where are the statements from police? This apparently happened four years ago. Where's the contemporary coverage? Why does a Google search for "Killingly CT parent arrested 2019" return a bunch of SEO cross links to the same story by the same person? I'm not saying this is wrong. I'm saying we need to be a little more careful with what we get upset about.

ch4s3 4y ago
Oh please. They publish a lot of journalism and have been covering police abuse for decades including work by Radley Balko back in 2017 when no one cared. Senior editor Jacob Sullum has won awards for his journalism on drug policy. Elizabeth Nolan Brown does great investigative work around sex workers. It isn’t a click bait farm, even if YOU disagree with their politics.
- ajross 4y ago
  That may all be true, but it remains the case that every time I see a Reason link being thrown around it's one of these kinda suspect things. You know this is a junk piece. They ran it anyway. Again: how much work does it take to assign a journalist and call the police department to verify the arrest records?
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    I can't really speak to this article, and as they've changed the family's name(s) for privacy reasons it's hard to fact check, but other stuff published by Lenore Skenazy about similar cases seems more readily verifiable. That said I don't really pay much attention to this type of story so I'm not well versed on the issue or who is credible in reporting on it. But for issues I do follow, I usually find their reporting to be excellent.
  - noisy_boy 4y ago
    I didn't believe you (because my blood boiled too) but then I decided to search for this story in Google (without using names but just the incident and location) and didn't find any reputed news organization reporting it, which admittedly surprised me. I found a similar case where parents got in trouble for letting kids walk around alone[0], but not this case (and considering the specifics here are bound to touch the nerves of parents and practically guarantee viewership, I would think that it would be pretty attractive piece to print for them assuming it was found to be genuine). Not trying to agree/disagree but just sharing what I noticed. [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-parents-cleared-in-second-neglect-case-after-children-walked-alone/2015/06/22/82283c24-188c-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-pa...
    - CogitoCogito 4y ago
      The fact that you couldn't find it reported in another "reputed news organization" doesn't mean it didn't happen. News organizations only have limited bandwidth and the extreme power that police and CPS has in these kinds of situations isn't exactly a secret nationally. Maybe the reputed news organizations simply don't consider it news? Or maybe the organizations aren't as reputed as you believe? There are many explanations for the lack of corroborating reporting here that don't imply the original story isn't true.
      - noisy_boy 4y ago
        Maybe - however, we are expected to do our own due diligence for trustworthiness of news and considering that we have limited time and resources at our disposal, one has to set some sort of an approach to do so - in my case, reputed news organisation it is (and people are free to disagree with that approach). Using this approach doesn't mean that whatever doesn't get printed in NYT or WaPo or doesn't get covered on CNN didn't happen but considering police overreach is a hot topic in recent times with prevalent extensive coverage, it is possible but not probable that something like this (involving kids, which makes it a more "newsworthy" story) hasn't been reported, in any of the major news outlets, just because of undue influence of Police/CPS.
      - 4y ago
- jghn 4y ago
  > for decades At some point they went deep Tea Party/MAGA type, but seem to have come back to their roots over the last few years. However the commenters are consistently still MAGA types.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    When were they ever publishing MAGA content? Yeah, the comments have always been trash and they openly joke about it.
    - jghn 4y ago
      It predated the actual MAGA label. As the Tea Party shifted from libertarian to Libertarian to "Libertarian" (with about 5 extra pairs of air quotes) they trended with it. I remember I stopped reading when I started seeing pro-military, pro-police, pro-theocracy posts. A number of years later I looked again and they were gone, albeit the comments had remained as we both noted.
tomcam 4y ago
Mostly good points, but would you point me to a major publication that links to arrest records when an arrest is mentioned?
- kritiko 4y ago
  Most major publications would at least pursue statements from the police & child protective services about their side of the story.
- juve1996 4y ago
  Plenty would if it supports the narrative.
- ajross 4y ago
  Virtually all of them? Here's the Times covering SBF's arrest: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/business/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-bahamas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/business/ftx-sam-bankman-... Note all the quotes from law enforcement and details about the event.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    I was probably taking you too literally. I thought you were talking about links to arrest records, which I pretty much never see. I may be not looking closely enough for those links.
    - ajross 4y ago
      Right, just verification is all that's needed. "Killingly police records confirm Rivers was arrested on January 77th" or whatever. Or maybe "Killingly police confirm Rivers was detained briefly, but note that he was never arrested". Anything like that would be great. Even "Reached for comment, Killingly police were unable to confirm Rivers' arrest, but would not deny the arrest occurred" would at least be something. But failing to even get that far tells me that either the author doesn't care about whether this is true (not unlikely given her day job), or that they're deliberately hiding something (maybe "Killingly police deny the arrest and have no record of the interaction with Rivers").
shrikant 4y ago
Unsure why you've been downvoted. I haven't been able to find any reporting about this story[0] till this Reason piece, so I'd be curious to understand their journalistic process in putting this together. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=Killingly+parent+arrested+2019+dunkin+donuts&client=firefox-b-d&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2019%2Ccd_max%3A12%2F31%2F2022&oq=Killingly+parent+arrested+2019+dunkin+donuts https://www.google.com/search?q=Killingly+parent+arrested+20... Edited to remove flamebait swipe at Reason -- I'm better than that. For now.
COGlory 4y ago
These are all good points, but I spent many years living in the town in question, so I am perhaps already biased.

by ajross 4y ago

ch4s3 4y ago

Oh please. They publish a lot of journalism and have been covering police abuse for decades including work by Radley Balko back in 2017 when no one cared. Senior editor Jacob Sullum has won awards for his journalism on drug policy. Elizabeth Nolan Brown does great investigative work around sex workers. It isn’t a click bait farm, even if YOU disagree with their politics.

ajross 4y ago
That may all be true, but it remains the case that every time I see a Reason link being thrown around it's one of these kinda suspect things. You know this is a junk piece. They ran it anyway. Again: how much work does it take to assign a journalist and call the police department to verify the arrest records?
- ch4s3 4y ago
  I can't really speak to this article, and as they've changed the family's name(s) for privacy reasons it's hard to fact check, but other stuff published by Lenore Skenazy about similar cases seems more readily verifiable. That said I don't really pay much attention to this type of story so I'm not well versed on the issue or who is credible in reporting on it. But for issues I do follow, I usually find their reporting to be excellent.
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  I didn't believe you (because my blood boiled too) but then I decided to search for this story in Google (without using names but just the incident and location) and didn't find any reputed news organization reporting it, which admittedly surprised me. I found a similar case where parents got in trouble for letting kids walk around alone[0], but not this case (and considering the specifics here are bound to touch the nerves of parents and practically guarantee viewership, I would think that it would be pretty attractive piece to print for them assuming it was found to be genuine). Not trying to agree/disagree but just sharing what I noticed. [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-parents-cleared-in-second-neglect-case-after-children-walked-alone/2015/06/22/82283c24-188c-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-pa...
  - CogitoCogito 4y ago
    The fact that you couldn't find it reported in another "reputed news organization" doesn't mean it didn't happen. News organizations only have limited bandwidth and the extreme power that police and CPS has in these kinds of situations isn't exactly a secret nationally. Maybe the reputed news organizations simply don't consider it news? Or maybe the organizations aren't as reputed as you believe? There are many explanations for the lack of corroborating reporting here that don't imply the original story isn't true.
    - noisy_boy 4y ago
      Maybe - however, we are expected to do our own due diligence for trustworthiness of news and considering that we have limited time and resources at our disposal, one has to set some sort of an approach to do so - in my case, reputed news organisation it is (and people are free to disagree with that approach). Using this approach doesn't mean that whatever doesn't get printed in NYT or WaPo or doesn't get covered on CNN didn't happen but considering police overreach is a hot topic in recent times with prevalent extensive coverage, it is possible but not probable that something like this (involving kids, which makes it a more "newsworthy" story) hasn't been reported, in any of the major news outlets, just because of undue influence of Police/CPS.
    - 4y ago
jghn 4y ago
> for decades At some point they went deep Tea Party/MAGA type, but seem to have come back to their roots over the last few years. However the commenters are consistently still MAGA types.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  When were they ever publishing MAGA content? Yeah, the comments have always been trash and they openly joke about it.
  - jghn 4y ago
    It predated the actual MAGA label. As the Tea Party shifted from libertarian to Libertarian to "Libertarian" (with about 5 extra pairs of air quotes) they trended with it. I remember I stopped reading when I started seeing pro-military, pro-police, pro-theocracy posts. A number of years later I looked again and they were gone, albeit the comments had remained as we both noted.

tomcam 4y ago

Mostly good points, but would you point me to a major publication that links to arrest records when an arrest is mentioned?

kritiko 4y ago
Most major publications would at least pursue statements from the police & child protective services about their side of the story.
juve1996 4y ago
Plenty would if it supports the narrative.
ajross 4y ago
Virtually all of them? Here's the Times covering SBF's arrest: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/business/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-bahamas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/business/ftx-sam-bankman-... Note all the quotes from law enforcement and details about the event.
- tomcam 4y ago
  I was probably taking you too literally. I thought you were talking about links to arrest records, which I pretty much never see. I may be not looking closely enough for those links.
  - ajross 4y ago
    Right, just verification is all that's needed. "Killingly police records confirm Rivers was arrested on January 77th" or whatever. Or maybe "Killingly police confirm Rivers was detained briefly, but note that he was never arrested". Anything like that would be great. Even "Reached for comment, Killingly police were unable to confirm Rivers' arrest, but would not deny the arrest occurred" would at least be something. But failing to even get that far tells me that either the author doesn't care about whether this is true (not unlikely given her day job), or that they're deliberately hiding something (maybe "Killingly police deny the arrest and have no record of the interaction with Rivers").

shrikant 4y ago

Unsure why you've been downvoted. I haven't been able to find any reporting about this story[0] till this Reason piece, so I'd be curious to understand their journalistic process in putting this together. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=Killingly+parent+arrested+2019+dunkin+donuts&client=firefox-b-d&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2019%2Ccd_max%3A12%2F31%2F2022&oq=Killingly+parent+arrested+2019+dunkin+donuts https://www.google.com/search?q=Killingly+parent+arrested+20... Edited to remove flamebait swipe at Reason -- I'm better than that. For now.

COGlory 4y ago

These are all good points, but I spent many years living in the town in question, so I am perhaps already biased.