Commentary: Article presentation unfairly maligned exceptional school official

Lavrentiy Beria, the ruthless chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin, boasted how easy it was for him to condemn a man — even when the man was innocent.

He explained with these chilling words: “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.”

I thought of Beria as I read the Daily Pilot story about Paul Reed’s pension (“School district’s tax-deferred payments for official’s retirement total $339,346,” April 17)

I have no reason to doubt the truth of anything the reporters wrote. But the way the story is arranged — placing mainly negative details in the first two-thirds of the story, and only revealing exonerating facts in the final one-third — suggests a Beria-like approach.

To be clear, I’m not equating the Daily Pilot to the loathsome Beria, I just see parallels in their techniques.

The Pilot imbued the headline and the large, first part of the story with the tone of an-out-and-out scandal that had no mitigating facts. So, if readers didn’t plow on to get to the end of this long, nearly 1,500-word story, they stood a good chance of being exposed only to material suggesting that Reed is a scumbag.

However, if readers did persevere to the end, the final 540 words revealed a different Reed. This part of the story showed Reed to be not only an honorable man, but also a very valuable member of the team. These are characteristics I, too, saw in Reed during my term as a trustee of the school district.

A quote of likely interest to taxpayers who are concerned about district spending — but a quote not revealed until the final sentence of the Pilot story — is from District Superintendent Fred Navarro. He said, “Paul Reed has been an exceptional employee [who] has saved the district millions of dollars.”

Indeed, Reed, chief financial officer of the district, earned the sobriquet “Dr. No” from his 14 years of holding the line on spending.

Another mitigating detail that the Pilot’s story revealed only at the end is a statement by the Orange County Department of Education spokesman that, “OCDE has found no irregularities” in the district’s compensation package for Reed.

Might not the Pilot’s decision to present first only negative details written in a negative tone incline readers to think there was scandal about Reed — even if there wasn’t?

Were Soviet Marshall Lavrentiy Beria alive today, he might well smile approvingly at arranging this story to accentuate the negatives and bury the positives.

Costa Mesa resident TOM EGAN is a former Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustee.