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Article didn’t tell whole story 

Editor:  

Your paper has lost complete credibility with me over the article you printed about the Berkeley High School Yosemite trip. Your standards for journalism obviously are of the poorest quality. The article was purely gossip and shows no effort whatsoever to research the facts. Following that article I will no longer read your paper as a source of credible news.  

What is worse, as yellow journalism always does, you have given a misdeserved negative impression of the school, its students and the highly dedicated, hard working and incredibly effective people who are diligently and impressively educating our students.As someone who works in education as well as a mother of one of the students, I wonder where are articles which point to what is being done well by underpaid and dedicated professional educators.  

If there was one program which deserved positive press, it is the Common Grounds program and instead you printed gossip and misimpressions about their work. It is a credit once again to these teachers that they have taken the experience and made it a positive learning for our students at this critical and vulnerable time in their life, just as they are launched into adulthood.  

I as a parent, will also impart to my son a valuable lesson I learned from my Junior year English teacher: always look at the source of your news. Are they credible? A lesson I have taken with me ever since with much gratitude.  

October 7 we began a war, I for one look for many sources of information and do not buy at face value any of it. So I listen to it all and decide for myself. If nothing else I thank you for the timely piece that allows me to impart that lesson to my son who was on the field trip, who handled himself with honor and can compare his own experience with what you wrote.  

Suzanne Dove  

Berkeley