SooToday.com received the following letter from a faithful reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, in response to this news article.***************************Charged but not convicted! What if it was you?There has been something lately that has really been irritating me in regards to how the media is handling a particular issue.That issue is how the police and mainly the media are dealing with the “advertising” of criminal charges.My question is: Why are we able to publish the names of people who have been charged of a crime before they have actually been convicted of such offense?We are all so quick to instantly assume that once a person is charged, they are guilty.The worst part is, if that person is found innocent of the crime, they may have a small retraction on page 15B which no one reads, or for that matter, will probably never believe anyways.Case in point.Reading today’s sootoday.com news headlines there was a man wrongfully charged of possessing and distributing child pornography.This is no light charge under any circumstance….yet one year after he was charged, the real story comes out.The SSM Police have realized that he was in fact not guilty of this due to having an open internet connection which someone else had evidentially gotten access to.Maybe I need to repeat that this dropping of the charges came one year later!Can you imagine if that was you?That is something that you could lose friends, family and even an occupation over.A year of people looking at you like you’re a horrible person.We live in a small community, and to say that word spreads quickly in regards to something like this would be a huge understatement.This issue hits close to home for myself as well.I had a family member wrongfully charged of a crime, which never even went to court because the charges were so grossly unfounded.Yet they were still published.This charge affected a person's business and reputation all over a false claim in which the SSM Police decided it wasn’t worth getting to the bottom of the issue before filing the charges and was of course still published.So, am I the only one that has a problem with this?Am I the only one who finds it wrong to publish charges of potentially innocent people before they are even proven of committing such offense?The question I have to ask, to maybe put the reason for my utter frustration into perspective, is…What if it was you?Would you want to be on the end of the accusations…the whispers…the tarnish to your own reputation all over a false charge that was brought to everyone’s attention before your side of the story could even be told?Ask yourself that.***************************