a child attempting to blow up a school -- has met with an explosive reaction.

The cartoon, which also showed a teacher, the student's mother and a Bermuda Regiment Sergeant, was intended to highlight the problem of parents refusing to allow their children to be put in special schools like the CADET scheme at Warwick Camp when they cannot be controlled by teachers in a regular classroom setting.

The cartoon was sparked by the recent protest by teachers at Spice Valley Middle School who were demanding the removal of a pupil who was "out of control''. In that case, the child was still at the school because her parents refused to allow her to go to a special school.

The Royal Gazette has also been criticised recently for its reporting of incidents involving two other schools.

In the first case, we ran a story reporting that three teenaged students from Saltus Grammar School had been arrested by Police in connection with the fire at Harrington Sound Primary School. We were the only media outlet to identify the school and the story was printed on the front page. But the school was not named in the headline, or indeed until the third paragraph.

Last week, we ran a story on the front page of the newspaper headlined "Violence breaks out at Berkeley'' in which we reported that Police had been called to the Berkeley Institute after a crowd of about 100 students had got out of hand. About 25 Police officers attended and two students were arrested.

When Friday's cartoon was published, many readers linked the child attempting to blow up the school with the fire at Harrington Sound and questioned why the student was black when it is widely assumed that the students arrested in the fire case were white.

The cartoon was not intended to comment on the Harrington Sound fire and in retrospect, it might have been better to show the unruly child doing something other than blowing up the school -- although that device was only symbolic and had nothing to do with setting fires. Nor was the cartoon intended to be funny; cartoons often have a serious message to convey, and Friday's cartoon was in that tradition.

It would have been impossible to comment on the Harrington Sound fire because the arrested students have still to go to court. But when the case does go to court, this newspaper will make every effort to attend, although we will not be able to identify the students because they are juveniles.

Some readers have questioned why the name Saltus was not used in the headline of our story when days later, Berkeley was.

There is little doubt that most schools would prefer it if problems involving discipline were never reported at all. But the media has a role to play as the watchdog for the public and that often requires giving prominence to things that go wrong, not things that go right.

Most people accept this -- but they also, rightly, are upset when they perceive that one school is being made an example of, and another school's problems are being given less prominence.

In the Saltus case, the fact that three teens were arrested in connection with the fire at Harrington Sound seemed to be more important than the fact they went to Saltus. In the case of Berkeley, the most important element of the story seemed to be that 25 Police officers were called to the school.

Journalists, using their judgment and experience, have to make decisions on a daily basis about what is most important to the communities they cover. Most of the time, we get it right. We will also make mistakes, although we do not believe we have done so in these cases.

Ultimately, what we have to do is publish without fear or favour. We must pay attention to the sensitivities that members of the community have, but we cannot be ruled by them. We must report the facts, even when they are unpalatable.

We also need to be held accountable for our actions, just as we hold others accountable for theirs. Therefore, we welcome comments and criticisms of our work and try to learn from them. We will not always agree with the comments but we will listen.