{"id":322,"date":"2012-01-04T13:15:29","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T13:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=322"},"modified":"2015-12-29T13:19:10","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T13:19:10","slug":"journalists-too-suffer-incurable-blind-spots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=322","title":{"rendered":"Journalists, too, suffer &#8216;incurable blind spots&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Jan. 4, 2012<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-323\" src=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/120104Pendergrast.jpg\" alt=\"120104Pendergrast\" width=\"120\" height=\"180\" \/>\u201cA few years back, I met a fellow investigative journalist in North Carolina&#8230;.The subject came around to the Little Rascals case. He assured me the day care workers were guilty&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">\u201cI told him about how the McMartin case in California had been the first nationally publicized case to use interviews that practically bullied children into reporting mythical, often totally implausible abuse. Little Rascals was a textbook case of the same kind of tactics, and Ofra\u00a0Bikel&#8217;s three fine documentaries left no doubt about this terrible miscarriage of justice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">\u201cYet my friend refused to listen to any other evidence or point of view. It transpired that his wife had recovered \u2018memories\u2019 of sexual abuse \u2013 another subject on which he would hear no other evidence&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style170\">&#8220;I tell you this just to let you know I am familiar with cases in which otherwise objective journalists develop seemingly incurable blind spots.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style173\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>\u2013\u00a0 From a 1997 letter to Columbia Journalism Review by Mark Pendergrast,\u00a0author of \u201cVictims of Memory,\u201d challenging criticism\u00a0of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jan. 4, 2012 \u201cA few years back, I met a fellow investigative journalist in North Carolina&#8230;.The subject came around to the Little Rascals case. He assured me the day care workers were guilty&#8230;. \u201cI told him about how the McMartin case in California had been the first nationally publicized case to use interviews that practically [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}