When in doubt, blame teenagers

Last Saturday, at 5:30 in the morning, an older man was brutally beaten in a Canadian Tire parking lot in Airdrie, a town of 25,000 just north of Calgary. The story was a press favourite with sensational reports about this "61-year-old Albertan whose skull was repeatedly fractured by teenagers who beat him up in an Airdrie parking lot." The outrage has made headlines all week, sparking calls for curfews to protect innocent citizens from wayward youth.

Now come the facts about this "teen swarming." The police have arrested three men, none of them teenagers, and it turns out there was nothing random about the assault. The men apparently knew their victim and sought him out for retribution as a result of drug deals gone bad.

Of all the TV stations and newspapers that covered this story you might expect one reporter or editor would have suppressed their eagerness to blame youth long enough to realize they did not in fact know how old the attackers were or their motive. The media owe teenagers a collective apology.