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PAGE 4, WEDNESDAY MARCH 23, 1983, WHITBY FREE PRESS whitby Voice of the County Town Michael Ian Burgess, F The only Whitby newspaper independently owned and operated by Whitby iblished every Wednesday Publisher . Managing Editor by M.B.M. Publishing and Photography Inc. Phone 668-61 Il The Free Press Building, 1311 Brock Street North, P.O. Box 206, Whitby, Ont. LESLIE BUTLER Community Editor ELIZABETH NOZDRYN Advertising Manager Second class Mail Registration No. 5351 eresments for Whitby residents. The press is not entirely responsible for garbled stories The Durham Board of Education took a cue from the ways of the federal government in its presen- tation of an in depth report on the Durham school system last week. The procedures followed raise serlous questions about freedom of information, the right of the public to know the facts and to know them correctly. The study, called a Co-operative Evaluation and Development of School Systems (CEDSS) monitored the attitudes of parents, ratepayers, students and teachers in Durham toward five aspects of education. Responses to questions about general at- titudes toward education, curriculum, discipline, fInancing and French were tabled by board mem- I got a letter not long ago from a man in Sudbury who will become a grandfather sometime this summer and who is anxious about it. Man-like, he is already assum- ing that the child will be a grandson. He says it better than I could, so l'il quote his letter from here on: "The doctors must be very careful not to injure him as he enters his new world. He must then be protected against a host of bacteria that would invade his young body. Sur- viving these hazards, we find ourselves responsible for a small person who will eat anything not made of stone, who will walk on thin ice, run up to cross dogs, fall out of trees, and just behave as though he wished to self- destruct. What I don't accept is that the greatest threat to my grandson's future is his fellow man. I am sure that this summer in Russia, many people will become grand- parents. They will share my concerns about their new family members. I offer them my love and my good wishes for I know in my heart that they wish me no harm. Why must it be that a handful of leaders can turn millions of people against one another? We, the family of man, who have survived a thousand calamities and still evolved to this place of enlightenment! Yet every day we hear in the news our fearless leaders debating over who has the most killing power and whose delivery system is best. My grandson stands a good chance of being killed by some people who are just like him and who really bear him no malice. Why can't world leaders, who are supposed to represent the best in man, see the madness of their ways? i am not so naive as to think that either side will suddenly destroy their weapons. But I am so naive that I think the top men of each side should talk, not lower-ranking people who have no mandate other than to count rockets. As a citizen to Planet Earth I charge world leaders with treason against their fellow man. Not so much for building more weapons, but, knowing the consequences of global conflict, they did fail to communicate with each other with ail the sinceri- ty they could command. Such a place for my grandson to be bom. The com grows seven feet high and the laughter of children rings through the land. The whole world could be like this if the same money and effort that gces into killing went to the benefit of man. I have no enemies in foreign lands. My only enemies are the leaders of both sides who fail to work through the night to bring peace on earth." The typed portion of the letter ends there and my cor- respondent scribbles a P.S. in his own hand. "I just wrote this note to relieve my frustrations. A carpenter has lit- de voice in the scheme of things." I would add my own P.S. to his: Simply that carpentry is an honourable craft, and that et least one carpenter we ail know of changed the course of history and human thought; and that sometimes, I wish the whole world was in the hands of grparent. bers and by an independent team to verify the board's findings. What emerged was a 500-page report con- taining what is possibly the most vital information about the quality of education in Durham to ever be released. The board called a press conference to release the findings and allow reporters to question the two teams of researchers, all very nice. Reporters arrived at 4:30 on a Monday afternoon and before them was a week's worth of reading. To assist the press in the monumental task of reducing 500 pages of information into 50Q-word newsstories, the researchers kindly highlighted the findings. The crux: reporters were expected to ask in- telligent questions about a complicated document that had been in their possession for less than one hour. Needless to say, the questions were not very In- telligent. They were not probing, nor were they biting, nor did they address the central issues in the report. The reporters did not know the central issues because they hadn't read the report. Their perception of the report and its contents was, at that point, entirely the perception of the researchers and the board who had highlighted it. The Durham Board of Education isn't the only political body to use this technique of releasing information. Each year the federal government releases to the public its most important document--the federal budget. What follows is termed the "budget lock-up", one of the most absurd and hysterical press events of the year. Reporters from across the country are literally locked up in one room for a period of eight hours during which they are expected to read, highlight, digest, interpret and write about the budget. It goes wlthout saying this document is endlessly lone, complex, confusing and important to Canadians. To assist the reporters, the federal government, like the Durham Board of Education, sends its "experts" to highlight importance of the document. The objectivity of these experts, being em- missaries of the federal government, can . be questioned. Far be it from us to suggest this practice deliberately fosters a dependance on the part of the reporters on the "experts". Judge for yourself. We will suggest, however, the entire process unnecessarily forces the press to produce over- simpllfied, possibly erroneous, probably confused reports on vitally important matters. Who suffers here? It's not the writers of the report, or the reporters (they're paid to slIde by the seat of their pants). It's the public, which doesn't get to read the original document and must depend entirely on these (oversimplified, erroneous, confused) reports as their only source of information. Presumably, if the press received the report a week before the trustees problems would arise. How well did this technique work? An anonymous person calling him (or her) self a "concerned parent and taxpayer" leaked a portion of the report to every newspaper in Durham Region two weeks before the board's official presentation. Newspapers published everything from a synopsis of the recommendations to (as one editor did) an exhausting reproduction of the en- tire 134 recommendations. $o the board missed its chance to fully explain the report to the press before the results were published, the press still didn't get a full under- standing of the document (because only the recommendations and not the reasons for them were leaked) and the public stili ended up with in- complete, misleading information. As a public body the Durham Board should foster every opportunity to get the facts to the taxpayers, whether they reflect favourably.on the board or not. The irony of the entire situation is that among the 134 recommendations made by the resear- chers to the board is one stating the need for bet- ter communication with taxpayers, parents, students and teachers. All we can say is, they're off to a rather poor start. - - ~ L- Il,, 1 -À