My column

When I was a reporter, I remember a school board candidate calling me one night to say he was following a truck that had run over his signs. The next day, he wanted me to write a story about the person he believed was responsible, though he never filed a police report and could not give any verifiable proof that the person was the vandal.
I called the other candidate anyway, and he denied doing anything and instead accused the candidate who called me of election shenanigans. I never wrote that story, though later I reported on how animosity between the two had stalled decisions on the board.
So we have learned to err on the side of caution during the election cycle.
This was our guiding principle after we did a brief on two teens being arrested for defacing campaign signs in Glendora two weeks ago.
We thought the story was worthy of a short story, but eventually found out one of the teens was the daughter of a former councilman who had been one of three recalled in 2002.
The signs that the teen was putting stickers on belonged to one of the men elected after the recall. The teens said they didn’t believe they were committing a crime because the signs were illegally posted, police said.
We briefed the arrests. Two Los Angeles television stations and a major downtown paper visited Glendora and took the pre-election bait, covering the event as a political free speech issue and glossing over the family connections and possible political motivations.
On Monday, the police department released additional information that seems to contradict accusations of abuse made by the teens, parents and supporters.
We review stories dealing with elections and candidates closely near elections. If a story rises to a level of verifiable corruption or abuse of power, it easily passes the hurdle, regardless of who is involved.
Obviously, regardless of our stance, once other media took note our responsibility was to re-evaluate our decision. We did.
But reviewing what I believe has been incomplete reporting by others, waiting until after Election Day was the right decision. The paper expects to be coming out with a story in the next few days about this controversy.
You may not agree with my reasoning, and that’s fine. I just wanted to let you know how we got there. I would rather be right than first. Though of course being right and first is even better.