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suicide via myspace (a story)

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Rusty Shackleford, Nov 11, 2007.

Page 5 of 14
  1. anonymousprick

    anonymousprick Member

    If you're the editor of this piece, do you really leave "Pokin Around" as part of the headline here? I'm sure it is the title of the guy's regular column, but to me, putting something like that on top of such a powerful column seems to trivialize things.
     
    anonymousprick, Nov 11, 2007
    #49
  2. Angola!

    Angola! Guest

    I meant in the future. And maybe classmates don't know. If they move, the classmates really won't know.
     
    Angola!, Nov 11, 2007
    #50
  3. leo1

    leo1 Active Member

    jesus fucking christ.

    i am two or three weeks away from becoming the parent of a girl.

    on friday i talked with a friend's wife who has teenagers who told us how vigilant she is in monitoring her kids' use of technology. her kids have almost no privacy, which kind of rubbed me the wrong way when she talked about how she checks their browser history, logs into their myspace pages, etc. this woman was livid that her kid's 7th grade geography teacher introduced them to the world of blogging. (not sure exactly what they were doing but kids had to contribute to a class blog).

    after reading this story i think this woman was on the money.
     
    leo1, Nov 11, 2007
    #51
  4. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Assuming all the background information is properly sourced, the response should be, "fine, see you in court. We'll subpoena every MySpace entry ever made for 'Josh Evans', subpoena IP addresses, and splatter it ALL OVER the front page. You're wandering into a briar patch here you'll never get out of."
     
    Starman, Nov 11, 2007
    #52
  5. GBNF

    GBNF Well-Known Member

    What a powerful, well-written story. Had me glued the entire time.

    Those parents should be fucking hanged for what they did. Pricks. And the daughter should be publicly humiliated. I don't ccare about her future. What a little bitch.
     
    GBNF, Nov 11, 2007
    #53
  6. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    You're right, but I don't get the sense that's the reason here....it makes no sense. If the names appear in police/FBI reports, there's no reason for a newspaper to withhold the names due to a lame 'you should be careful' threat. We're missing part of the story.
     
    21, Nov 11, 2007
    #54
  7. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Why couldn't the FBI fish the last few posts off the computer, I'm wondering.
     
    slappy4428, Nov 11, 2007
    #55
  8. Fenian_Bastard

    Fenian_Bastard Guest

    Well, that's settled, I guess.
     
    Fenian_Bastard, Nov 11, 2007
    #56
  9. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with you. I'd think you have to somehow strike a balance between letting your kid just be a normal kid -- and all of her friends had MySpace pages. -- and protecting her because of her problems. It sounded like the mom was trying to do that. Let the kid be normal, but try to monitor it. The problem is, you can't monitor your kids 24 hours a day. And that isn't the mom's fault, in my opinion.

    I don't agree that parents who allow a 13 or 14 year old to have a myspace page are nuts. The kids are going to do it without your knowledge. Kids are savvy and all of their friends have pages on social-networking sites. Welcome to the Internet age. I'd rather know what my kid is up to, and try to monitor it, than bury my head in the sand. In this case, it isn't like the kind of harm occurred that someone would ever predict from a MySpace page. Never in a million years would you think your friends (adults!) from down the block--the ones your kid has gone away with on vacation and whose foosball table you are keeping for them--would perpetrate something so cruel and evil. This was a story of adults doing something horrible to a little girl with obvious problems. They are horrible people who could have--and probably would have--done similar things, with or without the girl having been on MySpace. Holding the mom responsible is holding her to too high a standard in my opinion. No one can protect their children all the time and to every ridiculous extent.
     
    The Big Ragu, Nov 11, 2007
    #57
  10. crusoes

    crusoes Active Member

    I absoloutely agree. If a parent is liable for one beer at a party, if it's proven they were behind this horror, why are they off the hook here?
     
    crusoes, Nov 11, 2007
    #58
  11. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    A lot of publishers/ media lawyers run and hide under the bed as soon as anyone even breathes the possibility of a lawsuit.
     
    Starman, Nov 11, 2007
    #59
  12. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Nice post, Ragu. I posted this exact same comment on a different thread this week, and I'll revise it a little here:

    I don't know about y'all, but my parents didn't know much about what I was doing at 14 ... damn sure wasn't their fault if I got into trouble they didn't know about.
     
    buckweaver, Nov 11, 2007
    #60
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