Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 4, 1991 TAG: 9102040250
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FORREST M. LANDON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Patricia Hutson accuses us of "slanting" the story by failing to document the tragic consequences that result from many teen-age pregnancies.
Donald R. Stern, Roanoke's health director, points out that Ray Cox's story never examined "the rest of the story": that many teen pregnancies end in abortion, that many teen marriages end in economic and emotional turmoil.
Dr. Stern's grim statistics, detailed and quite recent, provide added context, to be sure.
Our objective in telling the story of Brenda and Eric Deare was much more limited, however - and so it will be with many of our stories, because of both finite news space and the very nature of what is news.
Not quite six years ago, in a three-day series by reporter Dwayne Yancey, our paper looked at what even then was called by at least one observer an epidemic: the phenomenon of an ever-growing number of teen pregnancies in Roanoke and across Western Virginia.
Statistics similar to Dr. Stern's, alarming then as now, were cited at great length in Yancey's articles. ("One in five babies born in Virginia is born out of wedlock." "One in three babies born in Roanoke is born to an unwed mother - a rate that is twice the national average." Of 312 teen pregnancies in the Roanoke Valley in one recent year, 150 ended in abortion.)
For the record, our Jan. 6 story touched on the family's anguish at the outset. It did not dwell on that, for surely nothing would have been gained from such intrusive reporting of what ought to be self-evident. But the story told in considerable detail of a young couple's struggle with bills, long workdays, cramped living quarters and at least some shattered hopes. ("Brenda was supposed to go to college.")
We take a lot of heat for putting "bad" news in the paper. Here was a case, however, where it seemed we were doing exactly what critics rightly ask of us: devoting some space to a story about ordinary folks trying to do something positive with their lives, whatever the misjudgments of the past.
As Dr. Stern noted, we were in fact portraying a "committed couple," giving life to a baby, not aborting it, and deciding the child should not be born out of wedlock - with the father staying in school to play football and get his degree; with father and mother working both full- and part-time jobs to make ends meet.
Arguments about premarital sex aside, that article portrayed good role-models both for girls who are pregnant and boys who made them pregnant. Nor could anyone have read the article without knowing what an understatement it was when the Deares' life was described as "a challenge."
As a sportswriter, Ray Cox is told to be on the lookout for interesting stories.
He found one, and told it well: the story of a young father who stuck with his girl, his school and his team, and wants to join the Navy after he graduates this spring.
So did photographer Cindy Pinkston. Her pictures sensitively portrayed the lives of a young woman raising a baby while working up to 60 hours a week at Arby's and a nursing home, and of a young man who went to school every morning, took a quick nap, practiced three hours with his team, went home for three or four hours, then worked from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
I hope the Deares will allow us to continue sharing with readers their story, however it unfolds. Surely all our readers will be pulling for them, notwithstanding the varying, strongly held views about events that led to the Deares' marriage.
I also hope most readers will understand that a sportswriter in fact is not irresponsible when he doesn't push his own agenda, doesn't make a judgment in print about whether teen-age sex is right or wrong, and doesn't try to turn a human-interest story into a full-length sociology textbook.
by CNB