A young man from the Lancaster area quick wittedly and courageously pursued on his bicycle a car that contained a young girl allegedly kidnapped by a sexual deviant. As an apparent result, the driver discharged the child unharmed onto the sidewalk and drove on.
Certainly this is a news article and that youth deserves both recognition and commendation.
But then article after article lauding the youth followed. Yesterday the Washington Nationals feted the youngster to throwing out the first ball, and once again the youth received major local front page treatment with a photo.
Now we appreciate that the Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. needs to publish news along with its advertisements and its policy is to concentrate on what takes place locally. And we recognize that the Washington Nationals want to further their good public image. This is good business. And we don’t question their sincerity.
But we ask, at what point does so much attention begin to impact the psyche of the young man? How will it affect his future life? Will he be able to adjust to being just another teenager facing the academic and social challenges of that age?
Will future aspirations be tainted through a psychological drive to once again capture approval and celebration?
All this attention could be for good or for bad. Only time will tell.
However, adults should treat youngsters with the youngster’s best interests in mind, whatever the situation. We need to separate out what is in the interests of the adults.
We all are proud of the young man and what he did. But for his sake, enough is enough already!
Uh, the crack NewsLanc staff should’ve checked out that the Washington Nationals honored Chris Garcia, 13, not 15 year-old, Temar Boggs (pictured in your opinion above.) I don’t recall any stories about Garcia. Names are important to get right in journalism, believe it or not.
As for the suggestion of exploitation, that’s a new level of absurdity. Congratulations.
EDITOR: First, we apologize for a staff member inserting the wrong photo. Secondly, we especially apologize for any photo being posted at all. To do so was not our intent.
We purposefully avoided posting names since we did not want to draw additional attention to the individual.
Seriously? Considering the crap in the news because of the state our world is in, or the constant need to post about “celebrities”, I would much rather see and read about the wonderful acts of heroism and kindness displayed by BOTH boys involved in this situation than speculation of when we are going to be “blessed” with the first images of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s genetic mishap.
And despite your “intention” of not bringing further attention to the individual by not posting names, you are being no better than other media outlets by having to even comment on it. Being supposedly vague doesn’t make it any better.
EDITOR: But it does help establish a guideline for the future treatment of such matters.