Reader Jordan Gehrke writes:

I saw your story on the Sault St. Marie TV station posting the names of those charged with impaired driving online.

I called the station and talked to the News Director, Jim Fitzpatrick, and read him the riot act. I pointed out that this wasn’t even drunk driving, and that these people hadn’t been convicted. I asked him what the thought process was. Did they think they would somehow deter people from driving drunk because they were afraid of being shamed by the local tv station, as though jail, payment of nearly ten thousand dollars to go through the process (for fines, costs and attorney fees) plus rehab weren’t shame enough? I also asked him about those found not guilty. Were they going to apologize to all those people whom they embarassed after the fact?

The guy said I’d given him a lot to think about and even invited me to write an editorial on the site. Anyway, I think it wouldn’t hurt for folks to keep contacting these people. He said he’d already gotten multiple calls on the topic.

Nice work! Maybe a few more calls will do the trick.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 5:52 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.