Harper steals the headlines
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When pit bulls are in the headlines, it typically means a human being has been harmed.
Quite the opposite in the case of Harper.
She's not a large, mean, frothing adult pit bull, but rather a cute, sad-eyed puppy. And, sadly, she was the victim in this disturbing case of abuse.
With that, Harper and those now accused of abandoning her with a toss over a wooded hillside created the week's biggest story, fueled by photos of the injured dog online, in newspapers and on TV.
News of a weak and ill puppy being found near a cemetery in the Springfield section of Coal Township first broke Monday, Jan. 9. We published our first story and photo the next day. By Saturday, staff writer Mark Gilger broke the story that Coal Township police had interviewed a suspect, but weren't yet ready to make an arrest.
In the meantime, we checked in on Harper on Monday at the Sunbury Animal Hospital, where she's recovering, and staff writer/photographer Mike Staugaitis came away with a heart-breaking photo of Harper, looking forlorn and with a cast on her left front leg, for Tuesday's front page.
It was on Tuesday that police made their arrest of a young Coal Township couple, charging them with cruelty and conspiracy. We published two stories in Wednesday's edition, one involving the arrest and another detailing the efforts of the owner of a no-kill shelter to help in cases such as Harper's.
While we were producing this coverage, Facebook, of course, and other social media sites, plus our own Disqus online comment program, were abuzz with emotion. At the least, people wanted justice for Harper; at the worst, they were suggesting the alleged abusers receive the ultimate punishment.
It's not unusual for such emotion to come forward. But amid the Harper story, another case of abuse would surface: that of a 2-year-old boy.
Sunbury police on Tuesday announced charges against a father and his girlfriend. The accusations included the girlfriend carrying the boy by his ankle and throwing him onto a couch, producing the broken leg. Details of a bloody mouth and the accused forcing the boy to stand against a wall, his arms outstretched to hold his leaning body, for two or three hours at a time as part of "timeout" punishments, were a new cause for public outcry.
For whatever reason, reaction to this case of child abuse didn't reach the same fervor as Harper's, at least not at this end of Northumberland County. That's not to suggest that people aren't just as appalled, or more so. And, for our part, we played the Harper arrests at the top of Page 1 on Wednesday while the child abuse case was at the bottom. Our reasoning had mostly to do with Sunbury not being a core circulation area for The News-Item, but did we trump child abuse with pet abuse?
Public reaction and news judgment aren't always easy to explain, as these cases attest. But I think about a photo of an abused 2-year-old with a broken leg and bloodied mouth being publicized as Harper's picture was last week, and wonder how that would impact our reaction to child abuse.
(Heintzelman, editor of The News-Item, writes "The Week In News" for each Saturday edition.)
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