Coverage of Dr. Dao, the victim in United Airlines incident

I respect the opinion of people on here immensely. So the media is catching some heat for writing about past legal troubles of Dr. Dao of Louisville, the man who was forcibly removed from the United flight in Chicago the other evening.
As you know, it was unearthed that he had very serious legal problems 13 years ago, legal problems that had nothing to do with this particular incident.
So as editors and writers ... do you think this angle should have been addressed regarding Dr. Dao? I believe TMZ or the Louisville paper first reported Dr. Dao's past troubles. Or do you think the past of Dr. Dao is not relevant thus should have never been written/talked about.
I have mixed emotions. It seems to me it is pertinent for folks to wonder a bit about the victim of this incident, hence fair game to write about who Dr. Dao is and what happened in his past. At the same time, devil's advocate would say, 'why drag him through the mud when his past has nothing to do with getting tossed off a United flight?'

--As a sidebar, any of you had problems with United? I personally feel SWA is the only "good" airline and SWA obviously is not perfect. If I have to fly United, Delta or AA ... I'm entering that trip expecting nothing but angst. Thank you for your responses to my questions. I appreciate everyone on here. Freddie.

 

I'd spell his name right, for starters.

 

Yes. A journalist's job is to report all aspects of a story, whether we like it or not. This isn't a court of law where past behavior or a rap sheet is sometimes suppressed. Drag him through the mud? I don't see it that way. It's just reporting the facts, not editorializing them. What if the first thing the Courier found out was that Dr. Doctor spent every vacation working for Doctors Without Borders or something equally charitable and commendable? Should that not be reported on bc it might really inflame people against United? It cuts both ways.

 

Ace disagrees.

 

By "found out" do you mean get a tip from someone at United?

 

tips come from all places.

 

Come on! Everyone knows the media is smearing the wrong person. #idiotinternet

 

If the guy had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991, the Who-Is-This-Guy story would have revealed that. I'm not offended in the least by the revelation of his past, and I think it goes to explaining why this guy felt like publicly defying authority was a good idea. (That said, even with all that, United and the security forces involved were still 100 percent wrong in how they handled it.)

 

So let me get this straight:

-Convicted felon.
-Drug Trafficked.
-Medical license suspended.
-Won well over 100 G's in WSOP.
-History of complaints and outbursts where he worked.

Yah I'd say it's fair game.

 

No his past is irrelevant. The officers who abused him, their past is relevant.

 

That was not a good blog entry by Jeff although I have a feeling one of his next Quazes will be with Chasmer.