Josh Claybourn has a column in the Evansville Courier Press explaining his role in how the fact of candidate Brad Ellsworth’s 19 year old daughter drinking beer became a story in the Courier Press.
The column contains an apology to Andrea Ellsworth and some questioning as to the Courier Press’s editorial decision to make a story out of the pictures of a 19 year old girl drinking beer.
The Courier & Press decided not only that this was newsworthy, but also that it merited several days’ worth of coverage. I believe far too much has been made of the issue. It should not be a front-page story, and my own opinion, which Langhorne made the focus of the story, is irrelevant.
Worst of all, the article embarrassed the Ellsworth family. Although I have spoken with Andrea Ellsworth, I would like to publicly apologize to her, to the Ellsworth family and any others for my part in passing along the forum thread to the newspaper.
Both the apology and the assessment of a flawed editorial decision by the C&P are good and appropriate. However, those good things are, in my opinion, tainted by attempts at justification.
Whether the illegal – and very public – actions of a member of Brad Ellsworth’s family are newsworthy is a difficult question. When Courier & Press reporter Thomas Langhorne asked for my take on the issue, I was deliberately cautious. I noted several times that underage drinking is commonplace and nothing new.
Yet some might see the blatant display of such actions by a member of a sheriff’s family as evidence of a double standard; police have used Facebook.com pictures before to identify people involved in committing a crime. Underage drinkers who do get caught – and many do – do not get off lightly.
The paragraphs are dressed up as non-committal deliberation, but given the context, they seem more like attempts at justification. Until and unless some connection is made between Candidate Ellsworth and something more significant than the fact of his 19 year old daughter’s consumption of beer, this information simply isn’t relevant to deciding whether Ellsworth is and will be a good public official.
Beyond the roving search for justification, the willful misrepresentation of the “crime” continues, well, unapologetically.
Ms Ellsworth may have committed the misdemeanor crime of possessing or consuming alcohol while underage. She did not commit a crime by posting pictures of herself doing so. The conflation of that act with the sort of felony crimes where a photograph might constitute some evidence–but, I daresay, never enough to charge or convict someone on that basis alone–is simply dishonest.
The more Mr. Claybourn opens his mouth, the more it becomes apparent that his attitude of knowing better than everyone else is only partly based on self worth; he seems also to be convinced that the rest of us are stupid.