This site frequently references “journolism, the spelling ‘journolism’, or ‘journolist,’ as the case may be, which comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias, and there are, with this posting, 148 stories tagged #Journolism. And here the credentialed media, or as Robert Stacy McCain sometimes refer to them as “Democrats with bylines,” go again!

Kentucky teacher fired after alleged inappropriate communications with students

by Beth Musgrave | Wednesday, December 20, 2023 | 4:58 PM EST | Updated: 6:10 PM EST

A Bullitt Central High School band teacher was fired after an investigation by school officials found he had inappropriate communications with students, according to a release from Bullitt County Public Schools.

Bullitt County is immediately south of Jefferson County, in which the city of Louisville is located.

School officials were first contacted in May 2023 by a former student who raised concerns about Rodney Stults.

That information was turned over to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and the Shepherdsville Police Department.

An internal school investigation substantiated allegations Stults had violated the school policies regarding communications with students.

Meanwhile in July, Shepherdsville Police Department told school officials additional students had contacted police alleging inappropriate conduct by Stults while they were in school.

Rodney Stultz, photo via WDRB.

There’s more at the original.

I have included the screen capture of the illustration used in the Lexington Herald-Leader original for documentation. Note that the newspaper’s original states:

A Herald-Leader review of 194 teachers whose teaching license was voluntarily surrendered, suspended, or revoked by the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board from 2016 to 2021 show the vast majority — 61% — trace back to sexual misconduct.

While that leads to the natural inference that the alleged “inappropriate communications” with students was of a sexual; nature, nowhere in reporter Beth Musgrave’s story, including the parts I did not directly quote, is that stated. It took more investigation to learn, via WDRB, that yes, Mr Stults’ alleged transgressions were sexual in nature, and his alleged victims were girls.

The photos of the suspects? Well, of course the Herald-Leader didn’t publish those, but it didn’t take too long searching with Google to find them.

And the end of the story cited above is a reference to another Herald-Leader story on a similar topic, also published on Wednesday:

Former band teacher at Kentucky school indicted for rape, sex abuse

by Valarie Honeycutt Spears and Beth Musgrave | Wednesday, December 20, 2023 | 3:51 PM EST | Updated: 4:58 PM EST

A Former Jefferson County band teacher has been indicted for rape and sex abuse, according to a news release from the Jefferson Commonwealths’ Attorney office.

On Dec. 18, a Jefferson County grand jury returned an indictment against Cyr T. Wilson charging him with three counts of third-degree rape and one count of first-degree sex abuse, the news release said.

The newspaper saved a bit of money and effort here, because this story was illustrated by the same one used in the story above. Given that Executive Editor Richard Green told us that the newspaper needed donations above and beyond what we pay in our subscriptions, that’s got to be a good thing.

Cyr T Wilson, mugshot by Louisville Metropolitan Department of Corrections, and is a public record.

The indicted charges are in connection to a series of crimes from Aug. 1, 2017 through June 30, 2020 while he worked with students, the news release said.Wilson has been reassigned from his position as band director and teacher at the Academy @ Shawnee as a result of district policies, JCPS spokesperson Carolyn Callahan said.

He was officially employed by JCPS in January 2020 as a teacher at the Academy @ Shawnee, she said.

Callahan said according to Wilson’s resume, while in college from 2017 to 2019, he was the Marching Band Ensemble Coordinator in connection with the Band Boosters at Ballard High School. This was not JCPS employment, she said.

Skipping down one paragraph, we come to this one:

A Sept. 2022 Herald-Leader investigation showed of the 194 cases of teachers who voluntarily surrendered or had their license revoked or suspended from 2016 to 2021, 61% lost their license due to sexual misconduct. The overwhelmingly majority of those cases involved male teachers and teenage girls.

Look at exactly what that says. While the article does not specify whether Mr Wilson’s alleged victims were males or females, we are referred to a story in which an investigation found that the “overwhelming majority” of such cases involved male teachers and female victims. How is that not an attempt to imply that Mr Wilson’s alleged victims were girls without saying that they were girls? As we previously reported, the same newspaper concealed the sex of the victims of a female teacher, administrator, and coach in Floyd County, even though two of the known victims came forth publicly, and yup, they were girls. As I said at the time, when I read stories which were written deliberately to conceal the sexes of the victims, I suspect that the abuse was homosexual in nature.

While I was unable to find any stories which specified the sex of Mr Wilson’s alleged victims, this story from WHAS-TV quotes a mother who said that she was worried, because her son was in the band. Is it fair for me to infer from that that his victims were male?

No, it’s not particularly fair, and what I have cited certainly does not meet any journalistic standard of proof. But the professional journalists out there could easily have resolved the question by publishing all of the facts; I cannot be the only person who has noticed how such reporting is structured to not disclose the sex of victims, and that has to make people wonder: why is that being concealed.