This article was written in the Alligator
October 7, 2009
When is an article's contents considered too obscene to be shown on the front page of a newspaper? This was one of the first questions I asked myself when I picked up the most recent Alligator newspaper. There on the front page was a short article about the UF engineering employee, 53-year-old David Blankenship, who was arrested for lewd and lascivious conduct involving a young girl. The topic is one that is not new to popular newspaper headlines. Rather, the specificity upon which this article took when describing the man's act was what I found to be obscene. In only the fourth sentence of the article on the front page of the newspaper, the author Katherine Bein explicitly lays out the finer details of the young girl's molestation. Bein outright describes how Blankenship "touched [the girl's] genitals under her clothes and penetrated her with his fingers". Something like this should be found in a newspaper, even on the front page. But details such as these which some may find offensive or traumatizing belong on the inside of the newspaper. A topic such as this is not being treated respectfully if the intimate details are being immediately put up front.
October 7, 2009
When is an article's contents considered too obscene to be shown on the front page of a newspaper? This was one of the first questions I asked myself when I picked up the most recent Alligator newspaper. There on the front page was a short article about the UF engineering employee, 53-year-old David Blankenship, who was arrested for lewd and lascivious conduct involving a young girl. The topic is one that is not new to popular newspaper headlines. Rather, the specificity upon which this article took when describing the man's act was what I found to be obscene. In only the fourth sentence of the article on the front page of the newspaper, the author Katherine Bein explicitly lays out the finer details of the young girl's molestation. Bein outright describes how Blankenship "touched [the girl's] genitals under her clothes and penetrated her with his fingers". Something like this should be found in a newspaper, even on the front page. But details such as these which some may find offensive or traumatizing belong on the inside of the newspaper. A topic such as this is not being treated respectfully if the intimate details are being immediately put up front.
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