Uneven Spotlight? Harris County Arrest of Assistant Principal Raises Questions About Media Double Standard

When Hardaway High School Principal Maurdrice McNeill was arrested Sept. 14 on a misdemeanor criminal trespass charge, his name, photo and position quickly appeared across multiple TV and digital news outlets. He was placed on administrative leave, and the Muscogee County School District (MCSD) released statements that were widely quoted in local media.

Less than two months later, another school-district leader was booked on a criminal charge — this time in neighboring Harris County — but her case has drawn almost no mainstream coverage in Columbus.

According to Harris County jail booking records published by The Georgia Gazette, Carol Elizabeth Gallatin was booked Oct. 30 on a charge of simple battery–family violence. The Georgia Gazette Gallatin is listed on the Muscogee County School District’s website as an assistant principal at Mary A. Buckner Academy in Columbus. Muscogee County School District

As of Friday, Nov. 14, a review of major local TV and newspaper websites shows no traditional news story about Gallatin’s arrest, even as McNeill’s case was covered in repeated updates, including reports when the charge against him was later dismissed and he was reinstated as principal.

The contrast has prompted questions in some corners of the community: Is there a double standard in how the arrests of Black and white public officials are covered in Muscogee County — and does that reflect a broader pattern in American crime reporting?

Two arrests, two very different levels of coverage

In McNeill’s case, the Muscogee County School District publicly announced that the Hardaway principal had been placed on administrative leave after what it called a “non-school related” criminal trespass charge. Local stations and regional outlets ran stories with his photo, job title and the district’s statement; some pieces were updated multiple times as more details emerged.

When the criminal charge was dismissed less than two weeks later, WTVM and the Ledger-Enquirer reported that McNeill had been “fully cleared” and would return to his position as principal.

By contrast, Gallatin’s Oct. 30 booking in Harris County appears only in a mugshot-style listing on The Georgia Gazette website, which publishes jail bookings by county across the state. The entry lists her full name, the date of booking and the “simple battery – family violence” charge, along with a booking photo. The Georgia Gazette

MCSD’s public elementary-schools directory still lists Gallatin as one of two assistant principals at Mary A. Buckner Academy. The district’s site offers no readily visible public statement referencing her arrest, and no major Columbus-area TV or print outlet appears to have reported on the case as of Friday.

Questions Dr. David Lewis must answer is: Why did MCSD not notify the media or the public about Gallatin’s arrest in the way it did about McNeill’s? Was Gallatin placed on administrative leave as was McNeil?Finally why was there not a press release sent out by the MCSD Communication addressing the situation...in the interest of transparency.

A local question inside a national pattern

Media-studies research suggests that questions about unequal coverage are not just local grievances but part of a well-documented national pattern.

A 2022 study by Stanford Law School and collaborators found that police-department Facebook posts systematically over represented Black suspects relative to their share of local arrests, exposing users to crime narratives that are more Black than reality.

A report from the Equal Justice Initiative documented stark racial disparities in how news outlets use images of people accused of crimes: mugshots were used in coverage of 45% of cases involving Black defendants, compared with just 8% of cases involving white defendants.

Other research on TV crime news has found that Black people are often over represented as suspects and underrepresented as victims, shaping what scholars call a “racial crime script” — a mental template that associates crime with Blackness and innocence or complexity with whiteness.

These patterns have consequences. Studies show that repeated exposure to racialized crime coverage can increase fear of crime, reduce empathy for Black defendants and strengthen public support for harsher criminal-justice policies.

Is there a double standard in Columbus?

In Muscogee County, the comparison between McNeill’s highly visible case and Gallatin’s largely invisible one doesn’t, by itself, prove racial bias — there are important differences in jurisdiction, timing and how the information came to light.

McNeill was arrested in Muscogee County, where Columbus-based outlets routinely monitor local jail and court records, and where the school district itself issued statements that made the case hard to miss.

Gallatin’s arrest occurred in neighboring Harris County and first appeared in a niche statewide booking-log site, not in a press release or court filing that local reporters had already highlighted. In many smaller markets, newsrooms with limited staff do not systematically comb neighboring-county booking reports for every public-employee arrest.

Still, community advocates argue that once an assistant principal’s booking in a domestic-violence-related case is public, it meets the same basic threshold of newsworthiness as a principal’s misdemeanor trespass arrest — especially in a district where trust, safety and discipline policies are constant topics of public debate.

The key questions now include:

• Do local news outlets have clear, written standards for covering arrests of educators and public officials — and are those standards being applied consistently across race and county lines?
• When charges are dismissed or reduced, will those outcomes be reported with the same energy and visibility as the initial arrest?

Until those questions are answered, the absence of coverage in one case and the saturation in the other leaves many residents wondering whether a racialized “crime script” is still quietly guiding which stories get told — and whose reputations are most easily put on the line.