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➛ S E R V I N G T H E P U B L I C T R U S T S I N C E 18 81
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2011
Editorial
THE TIMES LEADER
www.timesleader.com
OUR OPINION: OPTIMISM
Let us take heart in season of hope
H
OPE DIDN’T INSPIRE Hugh Martin to pen the lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The songwriter’s original words for the 1943 tune were downright gloomy, but he acquiesced to his collaborators’ advice and came up with the uplifting lines we recognize today. Have yourself a merry little Christmas Let your heart be light From now on, our troubles will be out of sight This December, as the nation’s long war in Iraq wanes, the region’s flood victims slowly reassemble their lives and the U.S. economy drops hints of restored vitality, dare we be so bold as to truly believe our “troubles will be out of sight”? It’s a long shot. But as the late Mr. Martin discovered, hope often finds a way of tiptoeing or tromping in when – and where – it wasn’t expected. Hope inspires. Hope soothes. Hope endures. May you be fortunate enough today to experience it, or amplify it, in your life. Below are a few quotations intended to help stoke the feeling. ••• “It is certainly wrong to despair; and if despair is wrong, hope is right.” – John Lubbock ••• “The hopeful man sees success where others see failure, sunshine where others see shadows and storm.” – O.S. Marden ••• “Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach ••• “There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.” – Proverbs 23:18
QUOTE OF THE DAY “No one on staff currently knew we had it. I pulled it out and all the pieces started falling out. It was just a mess.” Peter Carini The archivist at Dartmouth College last year stumbled upon a long-overlooked scrapbook that had been donated by alumnus Robert L. May, a former advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward who wrote the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Early considerations for the reindeer’s name included Rodney, Rollo, Reginald and Romeo.
OTHER OPINION: MOTOR LAWS
Teen drivers safer under new rules
P
ARENTS OF TEEN es for young motorists. Harrisburg missed a chance drivers can give them a lifesaving gift this to save even more lives by exholiday season: a full tending the passenger limits briefing, followed by a stern to all drivers under 18. But the warning, on the new restric- hope is that, early on, new tions for 16- and 17-year-old drivers will get the message motorists that take effect early that too many buddies along for a ride can be next week. On Tuesdeadly. day, Pennsylvania These rules will Of course, simjoins a growing num- save lives, but ply passing new ber of states, includrules won’t ing New Jersey, that only if there’s a change how limit teen drivers’ partnership teens drive. passengers, bar between young While police young drivers’ use of drivers and the have new authorhandheld phones and ity to pull over get tough on those adults who care teens for these inwho don’t buckle up. for them. fractions, realistiBefore qualifying for cally, it will be up a license, teen permit holders also will need to to teens and their parents to spend 30 percent more time promote compliance. For starters, parents must behind the wheel, with an emphasis on driving at night and insist their child gets the full 65 hours of on-the-road pracin poor weather. The aim is to assure young tice. Then, they need to estabdrivers are more experienced, lish take-away-the-keys rules while removing driving dis- on complying with the new retractions that too often prove strictions. These rules will save lives, deadly. Beyond wearing a seat belt, but only if there’s a partnerthe key safeguard will be a pro- ship between young drivers vision limiting teenage first- and the adults who care for time drivers to one child pas- them. The Legislature has givsenger for the first six months. en parents valuable new tools The rule is a smart response to to forge that partnership and data showing that, with every help keep their teen drivers additional passenger, the like- safe. lihood of a fatal wreck increasThe Philadelphia Inquirer
Proceed with caution when covering sex ‘scandals’ THE ACCOUNTS of sexual predation involving coaches at Penn State and Syracuse universities haven’t yet boiled over into a fullfledged moral panic, but there’s good reason for the news media to be mindful of that potential. It happened before, notably in the wave of hysteria – and prosecutions – in the 1980s and 1990s over sweeping accusations of ritual sexual abuse at child day care centers from South Florida to the Pacific Northwest. The scale of that lunacy is rarely discussed now, and to people who weren’t around it’s almost unimaginable. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in a tough 1998 series by reporters Andrew Schneider and Mike Barber, summed it up this way: “During a prosecutorial fury that swept the country from 1980 to 1992, there were at least 311 alleged child sex rings investigated in 46 states ... Children told stories that were appalling ... sex rings were run by Satanic cults, dozens of children raped by scores of adults, dozens of babies were killed and eaten, horses slaughtered in playrooms, children raped by men in black cloaks while the women waited in line for their turn.” The scathing P-I series was prompted by an especially egregious case that broke in 1994 in the small central Washington town of Wenatchee, where 60-some people ended up charged with 29,726 counts of abuse involving 43 children. By then, a national pattern had emerged of inquisitorial fervor and investigative contrivance: Triggered by fears with paper-
allegations must be taken seriously. If anything, the media apparently deserve reproach not for chasing imaginary witches but for ignoring real ones – enabling other EDWARD WASSERMAN boys to be hurt. But the potential is worrisome. Sexual abuse of the young is an utterly incendiary thin support, panicky parents – some of topic. All parents harbor a knot of suspicion them unstable – would demand action. Preschool-age children would be coaxed by from that first day of school, when they send off the dearest and most fragile person so-called experts to recall, or imagine, exin their lives to be cared for by strangers. travagant sexual atrocities from months or The wider danger from the current scaneven years before. Physical evidence was dals is in the plausibility they might confer rare. Scores of people were convicted and on more hysterical and farfetched accusasentenced to outlandish terms; many eventions, in the credibility that other accusers tually were freed on appeal, some are still who shouldn’t be believed might now be behind bars. Now occasionally, the news media – nota- given, and in the vast deterrent effect they might have on the next generation of menbly reporters at the Los Angeles Times, spurred by the six-year McMartin preschool tors. Those are people we will need to help raise the young, and who won’t if their trial, and Wall Street Journal columnist motives and proclivities will be doubted Dorothy Rabinowitz, disgusted by a New groundlessly, and if even a caring hand on a Jersey case – showed enough spine to ask whether everybody had gone nuts. But this youngster’s shoulder will be suspected as was rare. For the most part, newspapers and signaling suppressed yearnings. So the media should proceed with care TV performed their customary, credulous into the next phase of this scandal, and roles as prosecutorial assets, soapboxes for the most colorful denunciations, dispensers there’s certain to be one. Their temptation, having deferred unwisely to the men now of learned counsel to worried parents. The news media’s complicity in this witch accused, might be to regard the journalistic sin they should most avoid as restraint. The hunt constituted, to me, one of the worst lesson of the satanic child abuse hysteria is instances of professional dereliction in that zeal too has its costs. contemporary journalism, although I’ve never seen it mentioned in media ethics texts. Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalNone of that is meant to suggest the ism ethics at Washington and Lee University. He Syracuse and Penn State cases are baseless. wrote this column for The Miami Herald. Readers These accusers aren’t tiny kids wheedled may write to him at: The Miami Herald, 1 Herald into confirming grotesque fantasies. The Plaza, Miami, FL 33132; website: www.edwardweight of evidence is alarming, and the wasserman.com.
COMMENTARY
New Year resolution: Weather awareness, preparedness DURING THESE last 12 tumultuous months we’ve experienced more than 1,000 weather-related fatalities, more than 8,000 injuries and at least 12 – a record for a single year – separate disasters with economic losses greater than $1 billion. Numbers like these have served as a wakeup call, a jolting realization that our society is increasingly vulnerable to the weather as a result of a growing population and sophisticated infrastructure that continues to expand. And while we witnessed an unmatched succession of extremes in nearly every weather category this year, climate scientists have pointed to the likelihood that such extremes are not an anomaly but might be the new normal. This doesn’t mean we wave the white flag and bow to nature’s whims. It means now is the time to take bold steps to build a weather-ready nation: one in which the public understands the threat of weather; communities prepare in advance; timely and credible warnings are issued; and people take
COMMENTARY JACK HAYES prompt, effective action. The result: fewer deaths and economic losses from severe weather. Our call to become weather-ready resonates with an invaluable network of partners in emergency management and the commercial weather enterprise who help identify, prioritize and set in motion actions to improve the nation’s resiliency against severe weather. But a truly weather-ready nation requires that our entire society improve the way it responds when extreme weather threatens. As a part of this effort, NOAA’s National Weather Service will work to increase weather awareness through continued investment in research and technology to enhance the nation’s ability to monitor our world and predict its near-term changes and longer-term evolution. This includes deploying new radar advancements and securing the latest satellite technology.
Awareness also requires the integration of two different, yet complimentary, disciplines: environmental science and social science. Combined we can ensure the forecast and climate information critical to personal safety and economic vitality are fully understood and applied effectively. Greater awareness will breed greater preparedness. With reliable weather and climate predictions spanning timescales of hours to years, sound decisions can be made. From prepared residents taking safe shelter more than a half hour before a tornado tears through a community, to farmers ready to adjust the schedule for planting crops, to business owners armed with information to improve existing revenue streams and even create new ones. The bottom line is more lives and livelihoods will be saved. We must make 2012 a less destructive and deadly year by becoming a more weather-ready nation through awareness, preparedness and action. Let’s hope for the best, but have a plan for the worst. Jack Hayes is the director of NOAA’s National Weather Service. Visit www.weather.gov.
Editorial Board PRASHANT SHITUT
PRASHANT SHITUT President and Interim CEO/Impressions Media JOSEPH BUTKIEWICZ Vice President/Executive Editor
MARK E. JONES Editorial Page Editor
President and Interim CEO/Impressions Media JOSEPH BUTKIEWICZ Vice President/Executive Editor
RICHARD DEHAVEN Vice President/Circulation
ALLISON UHRIN Vice President/ Chief Financial Officer