Big Deal Oranges

[talon]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40097117/ns/travel-news/

I kind of agree with Mr. Henio: throwing oranges at parked planes is no big deal

It's not like they are saying he actually hit any of the planes, only that he was tossing them in the direction of the planes.

I also agree with the charges for which he was arrested - please note that hurling oranges isn't among the charges listed.

This is why I find the headlines misleading and the focus of the article stupid. The man was arrested for trespassing - an appropriate charge if he was on or near a runway at an airport or on land belonging to the airport. The article says he was in a grove next to the airport. This begs the questions: did the airport own that land? Was it Mt. Henio's grove? Did the grove belong to someone else? Trespassing charges depend upon the answer to those questions.

The other charges? Mere "suspicions", for the article doesn't say he was arrested for having spray paint or other drug paraphernalia. The police could arrest me right this second on "suspicion" of having drug paraphernalia. I don't have any that are specifically for taking drugs, but I do have a number of things that could be used (A glass of water counts, right? Because people use that to take aspirin and aspirin is a drug.), so suspecting me of having "drug paraphernalia" is an overly broad suspicion that police can use just because they don't like you. Maybe that happened with Mr. Henio.

A suspicion isn't the real thing.

This whole brief little article, with its misleading headline and vagueness just annoys me and reminds me of all that's wrong with reporting.

Where are the facts? A better headline would be "Man arrested in Airport Orange Grove" - you get the oranges in there and can even mention that the man admitted to being there because he was hurling those oranges in the direction of the parked planes at the airport (maybe he's stealing oranges?). If the grove does belong to the airport, mention it and the trespassing charges. If the grove belongs to someone else, it's still trespassing if Mr. Henio isn't the owner, but not so clear if he works for the owner of the grove so I would think it would be important to know that - both from the reporter's PoV and the police's PoV. Mr. Henio admitted to sniffing paint so charges of being chemically impaired (perhaps the reason he was hurling oranges?) should be laid and reported. But possession of drug paraphernalia? Unless the paint cans are there, those charges shouldn't have been laid (maybe someone else had the spray paint and held it so Mr. Henio could sniff without ever having the spray paint in his possession - no proof, no charge, no report.

I think the police weren't properly accurate.

More importantly, I think the reporter doesn't know his business. And that kind of shoddy reporting is so rampant that I have come to fully mistrust so-called reporters and journalists. Misleading headlines, no solid facts, lots of conjecture and often outright falsehoods because the reporter jumps to conclusions and then has to retract it (in small print buried on page 12 between the toothpaste and Viagra ads).

I would so much rather get the information a few minutes later if I could trust it to be accurate.

Reporters once staked their reputations on accuracy and prided themselves on getting the real facts.

Now, they grandstand and make things up just so they can be "first" and the facts lag far behind.

The type of reporting provided now is of the "hurling oranges" variety.