Baffled by article about Flock cameras
I am baffled that the Valley News devoted above-the-fold headlines, five photos, and almost 2,000 words of text to an article that I would sum up simply (if much less interestingly/deceptively) as follows. “A Hanover store owner learned that an application with anonymous contributors had listed three posted cameras in Hanover as being privacy-violating ‘Flock cameras.’ When contacted, head town officials and a Dartmouth official corrected that these cameras were instead ones that have been in place for many years, helping with traffic lights and other safety pieces.” End of story, and, it would seem, end of any reason to have a story in the first place.
Instead, the reporter inexplicably tries to create a concerning, emotionally affecting piece out of somebody’s incorrect understanding of three cameras, by writing 12 paragraphs about the shop owner’s business, five paragraphs about his involvement with the protest at the college two years ago, the nature of the shop owner’s father’s employment, and the proximity of the store to the Black Family Center.
How is any of this relevant to a story about an incorrect rumor about cameras? It is shoddy journalism, if not unethical, to imply that the incorrectly identified cameras are in some way connected to the shop owner’s history with the college, or that the hundreds of words devoted to his (apparently wonderful) business have anything at all to do with a report that one customer is staying away from Hanover because of an internet false rumor.
If the point of the article was to answer its large headline “Don’t we all deserve to know?” then I am in full favor of such an article. But it could be two sentences long, informative and simply draw people’s attention to an incorrect posting on the internet about cameras that have been doing important work for many years.