Teacher Smackdown

I received this email yesterday:

From: Joan [mailto:jlandon@juno.com]
Sent: 08/09/2007 4:47 PM
To: editor@451press.com; am@the-write-spot.com
Subject: Website Feedback

Joan wrote:

How dare you. You do no research yourself. You pull from little local papers who have their facts all messed upDo you check the police reports? Will you print a retraction when charges are droped. Of couses not, someone like you won’t admit a mistake

Website:
IP: 69.182.35.155

My reply (which bounced back - wonder if Joan gave her real email address)

Joan:

Which case are you writing about?

I make no bones about it. I’m not a reporter. I find stories in the press and make it available for parents and teachers (my two biggest audiences) to read on one convenient website. I write snarky commentary because people are entertained by it.

Lots more people read the newspaper and the news station websites than read my blog. And that’s where I get my info from. Why don’t you complain to the newspapers? Write a letter to the editor? Talk to the news desk and ask to speak with the person who wrote the story? Show them your evidence and challenge them on it.

If someone sends me a link to a follow up story or provides me with documentation, I am more than happy to post an update whether charges are dismissed, they plead no contest, guilty, are exonerated, or whatever. My readers are interested in that and so am I.

Anne-Marie
Teacher Smackdown

I’ve also been getting a lot of flack from “Friend” (no email left) and “Good Mary” (Goodmary1@aol.com) about the post I did on their buddy April T. Robertson. She’s the teacher’s aide in Lakewood, Colorado who was arrested on three charges of felony sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust. They keep telling me she’s innocent, the local press (we’re talking the Rocky Mountain News folks, an award winning paper with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands) got the story wrong from the police reports, etc. I’ve asked them to supply me with information to prove this, and they refuse…and continue to give me grief. Oh dear.

Dear readers, like I said before I go to the newspapers and TV news websites for my information. I do not have the funding, staff, or time to hang out in courtrooms, request police reports, and contact newspaper and television news reporters. I rely on the fairly decent (most of the time) press to get the story at least somewhat right.

And if the press isn’t accurate, or doesn’t do a follow up when the accused is acquitted, then let me know! Provide me copies of court documents, police reports, etc. If you care so much, YOU need to make the effort to vindicate your friend/relative/spouse. I don’t have the resources or the emotional attachment to the accused to do so. But I am willing to give YOU a forum to prove the media wrong.

Finally, this is an entertainment site. People love reading about train wrecks, whether it’s Parents Behaving Badly, the latest Hollywood scandal, or someone going through a nasty divorce. I’m just here to entertain and possibly enlighten/educate you about teachers who are up to no good.

prove their innocence, Teacher Smackdown, child abuse