Within hours of publishing its story about the indictment and upcoming arraignment of teen Oscar Galante on one count of motor vehicle homicide by reckless operation related to the crash that took the life of 13-year-old Savanah Gatchell, the Current received some pointed — and anguished — criticism of judgments we made in reporting that story.
We appreciate the thoughtfulness of much of the criticism and believe it deserves a response.
First, we are firm believers in the time-honored journalism adage, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
That state law gave us the right to publish Oscar Galante’s name because he was recently reclassified as a “youthful offender” did not end the discussion of whether we should publish it. Instead, we considered several competing considerations, including the seriousness of the allegation and the impact on those closest to Savanah and Oscar.
Another consideration is that we presume that many — if not most — people had already learned of the driver’s identity, and this merely provided official confirmation. To the extent that this was new to some people, the community can move forward with equal access to the information, unpleasant as it may be.
However, publishing Oscar’s name is not the decision with which most of our critics have disagreed.
Instead, criticism focused on the decision to revisit the single-car crash in which Oscar Galante’s brother, James, died in March 2022, including sharing a recently obtained State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Section (CARS) report. That report includes photographs of the empty but badly damaged vehicle James had been driving.
As an initial matter, that James is Oscar’s brother is relevant. How so? That is for the reader to determine. “We report; you decide,” as the saying goes.
James Galante’s crash occurred at a time when Marblehead did not have a local news source, for all intents and purposes. The Marblehead Reporter had recently withdrawn from covering local news, and the Current and other outlets that have risen up to fill that void had not yet launched.
If the Current existed at the time, we would have pursued the prompt release of that CARS report and any other information we could obtain about James Galante’s crash. Had the information been shared with the community at that time, there would have been no need to revisit it this week. But it wasn’t.
For more than three years, the role of alcohol in the crash that killed James Galante was not publicly acknowledged. As far as we know, Board of Health member Tom McMahon was the first person to explicitly make that connection at a public meeting last fall.
We get that it may feel like “old news” to some, but the marking of the “OUI related” checkbox on the CARS report — and Police Chief Dennis King’s statement to the Current that a juvenile had been charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor in the James Galante case — confirm for the first time what few, it seems, have wanted to say out loud.
One of our critics reminded us, “You are not a national publication writing about distant events. You are a local paper serving a small, interconnected community, where the people in your stories are classmates, teammates, neighbors and family members of your readers. That reality demands a higher level of care, judgment and empathy, because the impact of what you publish is immediate and deeply personal.”
That is well stated, and we do try to be ever mindful of our responsibility to the community. But in this instance, we think that responsibility guides us to err on the side of transparency, even if it surfaces painful memories.
Some of us have been covering this community long enough to remember Hunter Craig, Christina Rondinelli, Allie Castner and now James Galante and Savanah Gatchell. There is a reason those names can be conjured easily, without the need for a Google search. It’s because the part of our hearts that broke along with the community when those lives ended way too soon never fully mends. Yes, we feel a responsibility to help the community “heal,” but we also dearly want to be part of a process that lessens the chance that other families will have to contend with such pain in the future.
On that front, we confess we do not have all the answers. We wish there were an easy path, but our sense is that there is not one. Yes, we care about our relationship with the community. But one feature of healthy relationships is honesty — even when the truths are uncomfortable.
News outlets are fond of claiming that they report “without fear or favor.” However, when the facts of a situation are tragic, it is tempting to let one’s commitment to that principle waver.
Of course, that principle does not give us a free pass to be insensitive. But in the final analysis, we simply thought you deserved the truth — at least as much of it as we were able to gather.
