One reporter from a national newspaper deceived his way into our library so that he could rummage through old yearbooks. Some of our alumni had news crews staked out in front of their houses. Reporters were even harassing their elderly parents, tracking down home addresses and banging on doors, demanding interviews.

Journalists phoned us by the dozens, mostly demanding to know how long we had presided over a circus of drug and alcohol abuse, misogyny, and criminality. At least these reporters gave us the courtesy of a call. Many other national media outlets simply ran archly critical stories without bothering to contact us at all.

This was all necessary for American democracy, some of them explained … In a sense, that’s understandable. But as I learned firsthand, the lens trained on [us] was warped, obscuring details that ran counter to preferred narratives, and the resulting portrait of our community was grossly distorted.

Patrick Coyle, Director of Marketing and Communications for Georgetown Preparatory School, commenting on some collateral damage of the Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS nomination.