Local media are overreaching in an effort to paint a clearer picture of John Skelton, who is fighting extradition from Ohio and being held on $3 million bond for allegedly kidnapping his three sons.As the already-sad story of three missing boys from Morenci
, local media are scrambling to pull together information about the boys' father and suspected abductor, John Skelton.
And as this kind of pell mell rush to stay on top of the news cycle usually does, the local push to be first with "news" of any kind on this story has already generated some
stories with rather questionable news value. Take
from Detroit's WXYZ Action News...
Action News uncovered another chilling detail in the case of the missing Morenci boys, a MySpace entry by their father, John Skelton, from some time ago - a poem titled “The Dumpster.”
Needless to say that the rest of the report gives absolutely no sense of why a nearly three-year-old attempt at excruciatingly bad poetry is remotely relevant to this story. I mean, if you want to call the man a psycho, then just get on with it. He likely kidnapped -- and killed -- his children. He qualifies. But thinly veiled, dimestore forensic psychology disguised as "reporting" is part of what people have in mind when they carp about media overkill.
The Detroit News
Dec. 1, Detroit News: Skelton doesn't elaborate on the meaning of the lyrics, which were posted from his MySpace page and apparently written in May 2007. But the work, which reads like a meditation on abandonment or worse, adds to the sparse portrait that is emerging of the 39-year-old Morenci man whose three sons are missing after his suicide attempt last week.
And just how do the spooky MySpace verses add to this "sparse portrait?" The story doesn't say.
Look, these boys have been missing since last week. The dad has been on suicide watch so clearly the man's disturbed. But no law enforcement official has said anything about the relevance of some old social network posts, so what exactly are we, the viewers and readers, supposed to deduce here?
The story of these poor children is heart-rending enough. I think we can do without the local media adding its own psychodramatic flourishes.