You know the what, now here’s the why

We know Peabody is proud to be involved in events featuring D’zz Reptarium, but is it possible the entire town is snakebit?

The latest concerning news out of Peabody is that a second teacher has been removed from classrooms for allegedly inappropriate behavior with students. We still haven’t been told what the first allegation was about, but the second is quite concerning — an allegation of sexual contact between a teacher and an underage student.

A question that’s sure to come up among readers is why we chose to publish a picture of the suspected teacher’s family.

We don’t know whether the teacher is guilty or innocent. But we do know that no one is more innocent than the teacher’s wife and kids. We blurred their faces, but was it right to show them at all?

Several factors influenced our decision. First, the picture was widely available. If you Googled the teacher’s name, it came up on the first screen of hits. So, it wasn’t as if we decided to show something many people might not have seen anyway.

The real reason, however, is that it added to the story. What you see in the photo appears to be a model, loving family. When we first saw the photo, we instantly felt sorry for those pictured and began to think of them more than we did the alleged crime.

Whether allegations prove true or false, their lives are going to be impacted. It’s not the picture that will impact them. It’s the allegations. In many ways, they are victims to whom we should be lending sympathy and support. Acknowledging that they exist by showing them, albeit anonymously, is a first, necessary step in doing so.

The photo is a fact. This was what seemed to be a happy, healthy family. That makes the allegations even harder to fathom. Could they be wrong? Or, if they are correct, do they show that pedophilic philandering — like what happened in the Jeffrey Epstein case — is not confined to people we consider low class?

The true meaning and impact of the photo will be in the eye of the observer. In that way, the photo is like any other fact — neither good nor bad on its face, simply something that people can and probably should consider in making up their minds. For journalists like us, we present facts not to titillate or pander but to let you, the reader, decide what to make of them.

What ultimately made us decide to run the photo, with blurred faces, was that when others in our newsroom saw it, they seemed to feel different about the case. Those different feelings went in many directions, but the photo seemed to be something that added to their understanding, disgust, or both for the entire affair. In other words, as a piece of information — neutral on its face — it added to the facts they considered.

Were we right to publish the photo? Maybe. Maybe not. But we’ll almost always err on the site of providing more information, where possible, instead of less, even if the more can be painful. We hope our readers have the common sense to process that information productively rather than vindictively, but in the end, that’s up to them.

We don’t create situations like this. We also don’t cover them up or sugar-coat them. Bad things sometimes happen. The best thing any of us can do is recognize it when they do and try to figure out what we can do to prevent such things in the future. The more information we have, the better our efforts at prevention will be.

So, we published the photo. And now you know why.

— ERIC MEYER