Ky. principal bans editor from football game press box, cites paper's story on racial incident

On Friday The Winchester (Ky.) Sun ran a story about the arrest of four white high school students on terroristic-threatening charges stemming from a black student's receipt of a racist note that contained threats and images of a lynching and a Confederate battle flag. That night, the newspaper's sports editor, Keith Taylor, went to cover the high school's homecoming football game but was barred from the press box by Principal Gordon Parido, who cited the story as the reason, The Sun reported.

On Monday, Parido apologized, reported WTVQ-TV in Lexington. "I get a phone call saying, you're banned from the press box tonight, and I said you're kidding right?" Taylor told WTVQ's Erika Harsh. The Sun later posted a short story saying "Parido called Managing Editor Randall Patrick to apologize for banning Taylor from the game and for taking 'the tone' he did. He said that Superintendent Dr. Ed Musgrove informed him that he did not have the authority to ban Taylor in the first place. Parido said he also intended to personally apologize to Taylor. The principal maintains that the story was inaccurate, but has twice declined to say what the inaccuracies were." (Read more)

The paper's original story on the incident marked the second time the racist note had been in the news that week. WLEX-TV in Lexington ran a story four days earlier, two days before the youths were arrested. The TV story prompted a threatening phone call to the student, reporter Katheran Wasson wrote. The students are juveniles; Wasson confirmed their arrest by interviewing one of their parents.

Wasson's story was accompanied by a copy of the note, provided by the black family, and an editor's note saying that the mother of one of the boys accused of drawing the pictures told the paper that the words and names were added later, not by the boys accused of passing the note. "The Winchester Sun covered those words, including names, with black bars in this printed version because of the disagreement between the parties over whether they were in the original document, which was given to police for evidence," Patrick wrote, noting that the original note is not public under state law on juvenile proceedings. "The Sun decided to publish the note to allow readers to decide for themselves the seriousness of the complaint."