Letter to the editor: Don't glorify perpetrators

Why, when our country desperately needs heroes, does the media venerate perpetrators?

On May 16 the Tribune-Review published an Associated Press article, “‘Time for us to live for him’: Slain Colorado student remembered.” It reported on a memorial service for Kendrick Castillo, a teenager who was killed while he and two classmates disarmed one of two gunmen who shot nine people in his high school May 7.

I’d expected to read something substantial about Castillo and his classmates. Instead, the article quickly changed its subject from the hero to the perpetrators.

I counted the words: hero, 175; perpetrators: 263. Then I pulled up the original AP article (“‘Time for us to live for him’: Hundreds honor slain student”). Its word count: hero: 243; perpetrators: 599.

It’s interesting the Tribune-Review article included a photo of the 18-year-old shooter instead of featuring Castillo, and that it was tucked onto page B7, not page one.

I wonder: Who are the articles glorifying? AP and TR, shame on you. And shame on every media service that published the lopsided version of the AP article.

We desperately need our heroes. Don’t shortchange them while glorifying perpetrators.

Carolyn Cornell Holland

Ligonier