Yesterday, we took the family to a local fair to enjoy the sights, sounds, rides, and food that go along with it. My wife, Lisa, a vegetarian, took great interest in the fresh veggie wraps at one of the food stands. While we were there, Amanda Dumond, a reporter from the local paper, was doing a story on the “fresh food alternative” option(s) at the fair. We got roped in, photographed, and interviewed, which was fine.

The article came out today, and it’s horrible how much this woman lied just to spice up her story. Lisa was being kind and offered to hide our son’s piece of pizza (bought at another booth) from sight while Dumond took a posed photo. Instead, Dumond photographed her in action and made it seem as though Lisa had given our son the veggie wrap instead of the pizza. Nothing could be further from the truth (Lisa ate the veggie wrap, and our son ate the pizza!).

Dumond also indicated that the booth owners gave our children golden cherry husk tomatoes, something that also didn’t happen (and my kids were upset to read they missed out!).

The food at the booth was good — and I especially encourage everyone to try “french fry green beans” if given the opportunity — but it’s terrible when a human interest writer has to overly twist the facts in order to get published. There were plenty of truths here to write about, and had they been properly spun together the story could have been even more interesting.

Shame on you Amanda Dumond and Foster’s Daily Democrat for supporting this practice.

Technorati Tags: journalistic integrity, new hampshire

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 9:19 am and is filed under family, rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.