GREENSBORO, NC -- Earlier this week, I wrote a post faulting some unsubstantiated and incorrect information in a report News & Record reporter Joe Gamm wrote about the fights that occurred downtown last weekend.
I missed something important though. In a sea of hyperbole and what appears more and more to be fabricated stories of hundreds of teens brawling downtown—as reported by WGHP and WFMY (and unchallenged by Mayor Robbie Perkins)—Gamm got the central fact of the size and scope of the fights correct. Gamm did not hyperventilate the story beyond or in contradiction to available evidence and into the type of falsehoods reported by WGHP and WFMY of hundreds of teens fighting in a massive brawl. Gamm correctly reported, "a series of small fights" for which 11 people were arrested.
In my focus on the mile-wide holes in the local media reports of the events (and Gamm's quick pass at previous downtown violence), I missed Gamm's simple but exceptional oasis of accuracy amid the sea of panicked untruths. He got the core facts right. As remarkable as it might seem, he deserves credit for that.
[This post originally had "Gamm did hyperventilate..." That is not what I mean to write. It has been corrected: "Gamm did not hyperventilate..."]
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