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Tag: reporting

Poor news reporting sickens me

This certainly looks shocking:

Court overturns father’s grounding of 12-year-old

A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl’s grounding, overturning her father’s punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

According to court documents, the girl’s Internet transgression was just the latest in a string of broken house rules. Even so, Justice Suzanne Tessier found her punishment too severe.

Beaudoin noted the girl used a court-appointed lawyer in her parents’ 10-year custody dispute to launch her landmark case against dear old dad.

From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080618/wl_canada_afp/canadachildcourtoffbeat_080618180800

This is as detailed as I could get from the general web, I ended up having to search using the Lawyers name to find this article from the National Post:

Quebec girl wins court case over field trip

And while the case is raising some eyebrows, a tangled behind-the-scenes custody battle must be taken into account, said Montreal family law lawyer, Miriam Grassby.

“It’s a very different situation than a child who might appear to not be be happy with the parent’s decision and simply saying ‘I’m going to go court and I’m going to get what I want,” she said. “And if in fact it’s been portrayed that way, it’s not putting in its complex context.

From: http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=597169

I never thought the day would come that I would be praising the national post (again, I think) but there it is, real context and details that make the whole thing plausible and sane.  There is a behind the scenes fight going on where the daughter has moved back with her mother and there is a battle going on between the two households.  With that context in place, the ruling seems a great deal less shocking.

If one was only to read the light on details story one could easily assume the the courts were subverting the father’s authority over a willful and disrespectful child.  This would send shockwaves through the whole of parentdom, no more punishments.  On Noes!

The truth, as always, is a great deal muddier and requires more reading that most news sources provided. I shouldn’t have to research this crap on my own, I should be handed the facts up front and draw good conclusions, instead I have to treat every headline like it is out to lie to me.  That’s no way to present news guys.