Telling Chris Ortloff’s story

Reaction to the Chris Ortloff revelation has been intense: curiosity, horror, deep regret, and shock.

Traffic to NCPR’s website doubled.

Some NCPR listeners have reacted with anger to our coverage of allegations that the former North Country Assemblyman attempted to stage a sexual encounter with two young girls.

Understandably. Chris Ortloff is a local, a friend to many, a man deeply rooted in the North Country.

I’ve known him personally for ten years.

Our relationship is largely professional: politician to journalist. But ours is a small-town culture. Chris Ortloff and I have eaten together, drank together.

We share a fascination with and a love for politics. He can read the tea leaves of an election as well as anyone I’ve ever met.

And it’s important to remember that Ortloff is innocent until proven guilty. We can still hope that some new revelation will exonerate him, or at least mitigate the viciousness of his alleged crime.

Behind that hope, however, lurks the painful bafflement, the dismaying questions:

Why do men self-destruct like this? How can they rationalize their public identities with their private corruption?

What temptation would be powerful enough to risk the well-being of their wives, their children?

What could lead a man to victimize (or attempt to victimize) children in such an apparently calculated fashion?

Journalism can’t answer these questions. We can only report the facts of the case as clearly and factually as possible.

But if reporters write the first draft of history, it’s also our responsibility to sketch the first portraits of human nature, with all its shades of good and evil.

In the days ahead, we’ll work to do that as responsibly and fairly as we can.