2003 Speech Transcript by Tom Davis, Bergen Record
Speech given April 29, 2004

I’d like to thank everyone for coming out today.

I’m Tom Davis. I’m a reporter for The Record of Bergen County, and I am currently participating in a fellowship that’s a partnership between Rutgers University and the North Jersey Media Group, which operates The Record.

I write a column on mental illness issues. I also cover the city of Hackensack and the military. All of which have little to do with each other.

You know, mental illness is an issue that’s always been very close to me. It’s been in life for as long as I can remember.

Literally.

I remember sitting in my living room in Point Pleasant when I was 3 years old, watching Sesame Street. My mother walked in and I said to her, “Mommy, why do you repeat?”

See, whenever my mother wanted my father to agree to something, she’d repeat it over, and over, and over, and over, and over. And he’d agree over and over and over and over.

I think by the time he was done agreeing with her, my father would forget what he was agreeing to.

So I’m sitting there in the living room, asking a question that was considered a taboo question in our house. It was an unwritten rule in our house that my mother’s issues were off-limits.

But even then I was a reporter. So I asked anyway. My mother smiled a pleasant smile and said, “Because people don’t hear me.”

Now, I was only a toddler, and my comprehension level was barely past Bert and Ernie, but my B.S. detector was ringing loud that day.

I mean, c’mon ma! I may be 3, but I wasn’t born yesterday!

I knew something wasn’t quite right with her, right up until she died last year at the age of 65. I believed that all my life.

And I can honestly say that – since that moment of recognition at the age of 3 – mental illness has played a big role in my life.

And I’m not just talking about my mother, who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and spent a great deal of her later life under psychiatric care.

I’m not just talking about the fact that we had to deal with her issues on a daily basis, even if we didn’t talk about them out loud.

I’m talking about myself.

I’ve had experiences with bulimia in my life. In fact, as a Rutgers student and a Targum editor in the late 1980s, I lost 60 pounds in just a month or two after my girlfriend broke up with me.

I was so sick that I was forced to make the ultimate sacrifice: I quit Targum!

But I don’t consider my history or my issues as an albatross, necessarily. Perhaps there’s some good that’s come out of this. Perhaps it’s made me more sensitive and understanding than the average person when faced with mental illness.

For instance: When I visit nursing homes or mental hospitals and I hear people screaming, I don’t feel fear, really. I feel sympathy.

When I see a homeless man on the street, and he walks up to me begging for change, I don’t run away from him and hide. Sometimes I give him money, and maybe even strike up a conversation with him.

When my mother was hospitalized and committed to nursing homes, I drew closer to her, and I probably loved her more than I ever did before.

Perhaps that’s why, when I hear of a person pushing somebody into a subway car, I don’t cry for the electric chair.

I want to know, what went wrong? What prompted this person to act in such an irrational way?

Do people just do this kind of thing, like they’re systematically plotting to reduce the population, one-by-one?

Or is there some sort of imbalance in this person’s brain that prompted them to make such a horrible choice?

In a way, we are not that far removed from that kind of person. One or two or more people in this room may end up with Alzheimer’s Disease, or dementia. You may suffer a serious brain injury as James Brady did when he was shot by John Hinckley.

Or maybe you’ll suffer from depression or eating disorders when somebody you love leaves your life.

That’s how I feel about Jesse Timmendequas, who had a lifelong history of mental illness and abuse. He killed 7-year-old Megan Kanka a decade ago, a case that later served as the inspiration for Megan’s Law.

That’s how I feel about Sam Manzie, who, in 1997, killed Eddie Werner when the 11-year-old victim was selling candy for a school fund-raiser.

Or how about Andrew Goldstein, a man with schizophrenia. He failed numerous times to get treatment. Then he pushed a 32-year-old woman to her death in front of a Manhattan subway train four years ago.

They’ll probably spend the rest of their lives in prison. But whether they’re killed by the state or locked up in some God-forsaken prison hundreds of miles from here, the fact remains that, again, we’re a lot closer to these people than we think.

I’ll never forget when Timmendequas was sentenced to death. I was in The Press of Atlantic City’s newsroom at the time, and a colleague of mine yelled, “It’s not his fault!”

How ironic to be in a newsroom at the time. There’s no telling how many other newsrooms in the New York metropolitan area – and beyond – we’re probably celebrating that day.

Most of them were celebrating not because somebody they perceived as evil was about to die.

But think of the headline in the next day’s paper.

Here was The Daily News: MEGAN'S KILLER MUST DIE – JURY PANEL NOT SWAYED BY TALES OF KILLER'S CHILDHOOD WOES

Or how about when Sam Manzie was convicted and sentenced to 70 years in prison.

This was a New York Post headline sometime after Manzie’s conviction: MANZIE 'MOLESTER' IN JAIL SUICIDE BID

Or how about the Trentonian at the time of the murder: GEEKY LONER SLAYS CANDY BOY

Gee, if one of my students handed in a homework assignment saying that, I would have drawn a big red line through it and wrote, “Where’s the attribution?”

You know, there was a time when I, too, celebrated the arrival of such tabloid splendor. I used to tape these headlines to my door at Clothier Hall or in Tinsley when I was a Rutgers student.

And I certainly do appreciate a good, racy headline now and then, like “Headless body found in topless bar.”

But we know that in this country, the idea of innocent before proven guilty is really a fairy tale. And perhaps the media should be more responsible before it convicts somebody in print.

All we need to do is slap Kobe Bryant’s face on a tabloid, stamp the word “indicted” under his chin and Kobe – whether he’s found innocent or guilty – will forever endure the chants of “ra-pist” in Madison Square Garden.

It’s an old argument really. And I hate to be preachy. But maybe journalists need to be reminded every so often about the consequences of their actions.

You know, stigmatizing the mentally ill isn’t something that just happens to alleged murderers and rapists.

Here’s a headline from the Daily News on April 20, just last week: WEB HATE SITES LURING SICKOS, WACKOS, WEIRDOS.

Michael Jackson is always an easy target. How about this one from the April 1 Daily News: JACKO GOES MUM BUT STAYS WACKO.

Or this recent New York Post headline: STANDOFF; WACKO HOLDS GRANNY HOSTAGE.

Since March of 1995, the word “wacko” has appeared in both The Daily News and The Post 528 times.

Maybe I’m getting too PC in my older age. But I’ve grown a lot more sensitive to the words used in news stories and headlines that really do very little to educate, but do a lot more to raise alarms and prey on people’s fears.

Perhaps it’s because of my years of experience, and realizing that, again, we’re not as far removed from the Geeky Loners and the Wackos as people think.

And it bothers me that newspapers who staff their workforce with Columbia- or Harvard-educated people tend to reach for quick, witty headlines – headlines that essentially resemble advertising slogans – rather than investigate what might have prompted certain people to kill or “go wacko” in the first place.

This semester, as part of my fellowship, I studied media ethics with Professor Shawn McIntosh. We discussed a concept or philosophy called moral relativism.

When I think of moral relativism, I think of how the media essentially rationalizes and justifies its treatment of the mentally ill.

Moral relativism is a foundation of ethics where no guidelines can be formed fairly. As my professor noted in one of his lectures, “each situation must be considered on a case-by-case basis and there are no overarching rules of right and wrong.”

In my class, we read a book called Ethics in Media Communications that discusses how the concept was essentially applied by certain media as they explained away attempts to be deceitful, or exaggerate and even fabricate stories.

The media, however, hasn’t always been successful in that regard.

One such story was the book Primary Colors, a novel that was a thinly veiled take on the rumors swirling around the Clinton administration.

As noted in Ethics in Media Communications, the author engaged in deceitful tactics to maintain his anonymity – even with his colleagues at Newsweek.

Another example was a fabricated story about a love affair between baseball great Jimmy Foxx and a Judy Holliday, a story that appeared in Philadelphia Weekly.

Despite the media’s attempts to justify their actions, reactions to these stories were negative. As noted in a passage from the book:

“Reactions such as these from within and outside the media are refreshing in that they serve as evidence that such deceptions are not necessarily the industry standard. And a continuation of such moral guardianship may serve to prevent such ethical lapses from becoming pathological.”

However, as the book notes, this is the “optimistic point of view.”

The book continues: “A more bleak appraisal is that episodes such as these represent an increasingly casual attitude toward truth as an ethical imperative. Truth, in this view, has not fared well in the moral pecking order.”

Generally speaking, I believe the latter to be true about the media.

I think the media – especially the tabloid types such as The Daily News, The New York Post or The Trentonian – engage in a kind of cynical moral relativism that’s not only duplicitous. It’s downright deceitful and dangerous.

By essentially condemning people to guilt or murder or death or acting “wacko” – before they’ve even had their day in court, or before they’ve received psychiatric assistance – the media is indirectly or directly participating in the same pathological tactics applied by other notorious fabricators i.e. Jayson Blair.

They may pretend to be upholding the standards of good journalism, believing that their breaking news stories are doing what a good newspaper should do: Informing and educating the public.

And their gotcha headlines, they may argue, may attract people who otherwise wouldn’t give a damn about the world around them.

But all that is beside the point. To quote Albert Brooks in the movie “Broadcast News,” they’re burying the lead.

And I believe that this is no mere oversight. I believe this to be a conscious decision.

And in the process, they’ve sacrificed one of the fundamental tenets of journalism in pursuit of what I believe to be their true objectives.

Those objectives, of course, involve making a profit and/claiming bragging rights in their coverage areas.

And that tenet is reporting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I was told by a Daily News editor last year that if The Daily News was to stifle The Post’s circulation momentum, it had to be more like The Post.

He portrayed The Post as some evil empire that was eating up New York City’s tabloid turf, and it was The Daily News’ role as the city’s moral torchbearer to squelch The Post’s Saddam-Hussein-like intentions.

This evil empire had to be stopped, he said.

But, in a perverse way, that to me was essentially an endorsement for the kind of cynical moral relativism that the Post engages in.

If you need to know more about that, ask Gregg Morris, a former Rutgers journalism instructor and New York Post journalist now teaching at Hunter College in New York.

He used to tell me how the Post would bring in a team of editors late in the day. Their job was to make the newspaper’s stories more “creative.”

Readers wanted to read a good story, the newspaper rationalized. The facts can come later.

I like working for The Record. The Record gave me the opportunity to explore mental illness issues that few newspapers would.

My column is one of the few – if not the only one – of its type. I wasn’t the one who started it – I picked it up from Theresa McLeavy, who handled the job ably before having to give it up last year for personal reasons.

I’m thankful for newspapers like The Record. And I’m grateful for The New York Times, too.

The Times was perhaps the first – if not the only – publication to explore what happened to Andrew Goldstein before he pushed Kendra Webdale to her death on a subway track.

In a 1999 New York Times Magazine article, the newspaper explained how there were numerous attempts to get Goldstein help before he committed murder. But the system failed him like it failed many others:

This is what the Times wrote: “They knew he was dangerous. In the two years before Kendra Webdale was instantly killed on the tracks, Andrew Goldstein attacked at least 13 other people. The hospital staff members who kept treating and discharging Goldstein knew that he repeatedly attacked strangers in public places. They knew because he had attacked them -- two psychiatrists, a nurse, a social worker and a therapy aide in two years' time. Over and over, his hospital charts carried warnings.”

The Times continued: “They knew. Long before this subway push and another one last month, the state of the nation's shattered mental-health system all but assured such calamities. Yet for each hospitalization -- there were 13 in 1997 and 1998 alone -- Goldstein was given medication, then discharged, often after just a few days, to live on his own in a basement apartment. And now the consequences were front-page news: ‘Horror on the Tracks,’ read the tabloid headlines, ‘The Face of a Madman.’ ”

The New York Times was also the first – if not the only – newspaper to explore the failures of the mental health system when efforts were made to get help for Sam Manzie before he committed murder:

The Times wrote: “The Manzies sought out the authorities -- counselors and psychiatrists, then the police and prosecutors, and finally the family court. They were told to find treatment for Sam, which they did, and when he became violent they were told that the State of New Jersey had no place to put him, not even for one night. At the end, they were assured that Sam was not dangerous.”

For me, the Manzie case transcended cheap headlines and the failures of the mental-health and judicial systems.

And in this regard, I don’t mean to single out the tabloids. I realize what their job is. Perhaps they shouldn’t be held to the same standards as those of The New York Times or The Record.

I actually have a bigger problem with the way the non-tabloids – the broadsheets, if you will – handled the Manzie case.

To me, there was a collective dropping of the ball by the local media because they failed to investigate what was a complete systematical breakdown involving a not-so-complex web of state and county services – services that could have benefited Sam Manzie and perhaps saved Eddie Werner’s life.

When I heard and read about what happened to Manzie, I pounded on the walls of my former employer, The Press of Atlantic City, almost pleading that they do the same story.

In fact, I wanted them to go further.

When I read the line that said “they were told that the State of New Jersey had no place to put him, not even for one night,” I recalled a story I did prior to the Manzie case.

It was a 1997 article that talked about what was called the “Mayor’s Club” in Ocean County.

At the time, the Republican political machine that's controlled the county for decades had planted 16 current and former mayors on the 1996 payroll, in jobs that ranged from director of the Department of Consumer Affairs to management specialist.

One of them was Kenneth G. Holman, who at the time was Eagleswood Township mayor. He was handpicked by his buddy, Jack Kelly, a former Eagleswood Township mayor and then, as he is now, an Ocean County freeholder.

Holman was hired as a management specialist for the Ocean County juvenile services' non-secure program. In that capacity, he served as director of the Ocean County Children's Shelter.

Holman told me he had a background in engineering and had no educational or career experience in juvenile services or social work. He had just retired after 20 years as a forecaster for Atlantic Electric.

I asked him about his accomplishments as a management specialist. Holman told me he helped bring privatization to the juvenile services’ non-secure program and reduced the county's in-house staff from 16 to five people.

He also shrunk the same program from a 24-hour-a-day operation in which juveniles with problems stayed overnight, to a daytime situation.

Gee. What a coincidence. Ken Holman cuts the budget, guts the program, and then there’s no place to put Sam Manzie for an overnight stay.

Well, my former paper never did a story linking the two events together. They were done with this story. Manzie was convicted, and in jail. Their job was done. The streets of Jackson Township were safe.

Besides, there were other murders they had to cover. With a limited staff what can you do?

But the bottom line was this: Once again, the media missed the story.

Solutions? Well, like a lot of things, there are no easy solutions. Media are out to make money, not save the world.

And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that, really. We live in a capitalistic society. These media outlets are private, profit-making companies. They should be allowed to live the American dream.

But let’s apply moral relativism as a concept or philosophy, once again.

In other words, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the media, and see if we can rationalize a solution here that would simultaneously meet our goals as profit-making enterprises and moral arbiters.

Reporters are always looking for stories, right? There were many times when I sat in the Ocean County bureau office of The Press of Atlantic City in the dead of winter at the Jersey Shore, wondering what the hell I was going to write about next.

Well, if filling the paper is daily motivation for journalists, then why not write about mental illness?

And I’m not just talking about covering a fund-raising event where the proceeds go toward spreading awareness or whatever.

And I’m not saying that all journalists need to do what The New York Times did and write 10,000-word exposes on mental illness.

I’m talking about giving mental illness the same kind of respect that’s given to stories about murder, burglaries, council meetings, and cancer fund-raisers.

I’m talking about giving mental illness awareness efforts the same kind of respect that’s given to Megan’s Law, or abstinence education, or when a local police department wants to educate a public about a suspect who’s on the loose.

Let’s make mental illness a story, and not have to wait for The New York Times or The Record to write about it.

Let’s write about how it affects so many things we do. Let’s write about how it affects so many people we may know or fear.

For instance: If there’s a murder in your town, and a reporter goes out to the suspect’s neighborhood and all his old neighbors talk about how much of a “geeky loner” or “wacko” he was, maybe that reporter should find out more about what’s wrong with that person.

Maybe if the reporter discovers that the suspect is schizophrenic, or obsessive compulsive, or bipolar, maybe he should call up psychiatrists or the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill to learn more about the illness, and then report on it.

Maybe he’ll become more educated, and he’ll ask better questions and get better answers. And maybe he can include a line or a paragraph in his murder story that explains what this particular mental illness is, and what it makes people do.

Maybe he’ll discover that – much like what happened to Manzie – there were attempts to get the suspect help, but they failed. And maybe he’ll only get that kind of answer after asking educated questions.

Maybe NAMI or psychiatrists or psychologists should be on the same “call list” – right alongside the police – when a murder takes place and the evidence is clear that the suspect is mentally ill.

Think about it: Who in their right mind would kill, anyway? You can’t expect a person who kills to be totally sane. Even Tony Soprano had to get therapy.

This really isn’t a solution. But it is a start. It would, at least to some degree, educate the public.

And maybe it’ll go a long way toward not only protecting the public, but also getting help for all those 15-year-old geeky loners out there who are poised to become the next Sam Manzie.

Thank you.