Intent is documentation, not defamation
August 4, 2009
As journalists and human beings we would never purposely go out of our way to hurt someone. Sometimes, however, bad things happen in the course of us trying to do our job.
We don’t actually want your children to find out you’ve remarried by reading your name in a list of marriage licenses in the newspaper. We don’t actually want your boss to find out you filed for bankruptcy – or got indicted – from The Enterprise.
It’s not our intention to destroy your family, your business or your social standing when we report the news.
Nonetheless, it is our responsibility to report news events, including marriages, bankruptcies and indictments.
One of the reasons we feel comfortable in reporting facts that people might otherwise prefer to keep private is that we handle publication of the contents of all those public records in the same way. If your name is on the list, it’s going to be published in our newspaper.
We don’t necessarily print every indictment because we have neither the time nor space to follow up on the resolution of each of those court actions.
As professionals, we have to make decisions about the level of public interest in determining which cases to report on from crime to arrest to indictment and court action.
Actually, reporting on most events related to criminal activity generally is pretty cut-and-dried.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial. It only means that in situations where there are multiple witnesses or even video evidence, we’re likely to be somewhat cynical.
Those we are less cynical about are the innocent victims of crimes. That doesn’t involve the children whose father died or the family whose home burned. We are aware that sometimes criminal activity has peripheral damage.
When we write about the hotel, club, business or neighborhood where something criminal happened, we recognize that might affect our readers’ perceptions of that location.
Newspapers are, among other things, the document of record. They provide, both theoretically and frequently realistically, the first draft of history of any event. When we leave out information, we blur the facts in reporting an event.
In writing this column, I had planned to use the 1988 shooting death of a Beaumont Police officer as an example. By my recollection, he was killed at the Ramada Inn. It doesn’t matter exactly where that was because there have been several Ramada Inns in Beaumont since 1988 and, possibly because of that, the phone book no longer lists a Ramada Inn in the city. The location where I believe the shooting occurred still exists, but it has a different name.
I researched the story to verify my recollections and found one reference to a motel with a different name, which I believe to be incorrect, and stacks of old files that simply said the officer was killed “in a Beaumont motel.”
So, for those who would prefer that we skip that detail in reporting a criminal activity, we aren’t trying to be insensitive to your concerns. We simply want to do our job, which is to accurately, and completely, report events.
*****
Since this column concerns possible criticism of the newspaper for taking on responsibility for complete reporting, this quote seemed one worth sharing, and pondering:
“In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, The New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.”
Hugo L Black, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court,
On the publication of the Pentagon Papers, 1971
As journalists and human beings we would never purposely go out of our way to hurt someone. Sometimes, however, bad things happen in the course of us trying to do our job.
We don’t actually want your children to find out you’ve remarried by reading your name in a list of marriage licenses in the newspaper. We don’t actually want your boss to find out you filed for bankruptcy – or got indicted – from The Enterprise.
It’s not our intention to destroy your family, your business or your social standing when we report the news.
Nonetheless, it is our responsibility to report news events, including marriages, bankruptcies and indictments.
One of the reasons we feel comfortable in reporting facts that people might otherwise prefer to keep private is that we handle publication of the contents of all those public records in the same way. If your name is on the list, it’s going to be published in our newspaper.
We don’t necessarily print every indictment because we have neither the time nor space to follow up on the resolution of each of those court actions.
As professionals, we have to make decisions about the level of public interest in determining which cases to report on from crime to arrest to indictment and court action.
Actually, reporting on most events related to criminal activity generally is pretty cut-and-dried.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial. It only means that in situations where there are multiple witnesses or even video evidence, we’re likely to be somewhat cynical.
Those we are less cynical about are the innocent victims of crimes. That doesn’t involve the children whose father died or the family whose home burned. We are aware that sometimes criminal activity has peripheral damage.
When we write about the hotel, club, business or neighborhood where something criminal happened, we recognize that might affect our readers’ perceptions of that location.
Newspapers are, among other things, the document of record. They provide, both theoretically and frequently realistically, the first draft of history of any event. When we leave out information, we blur the facts in reporting an event.
In writing this column, I had planned to use the 1988 shooting death of a Beaumont Police officer as an example. By my recollection, he was killed at the Ramada Inn. It doesn’t matter exactly where that was because there have been several Ramada Inns in Beaumont since 1988 and, possibly because of that, the phone book no longer lists a Ramada Inn in the city. The location where I believe the shooting occurred still exists, but it has a different name.
I researched the story to verify my recollections and found one reference to a motel with a different name, which I believe to be incorrect, and stacks of old files that simply said the officer was killed “in a Beaumont motel.”
So, for those who would prefer that we skip that detail in reporting a criminal activity, we aren’t trying to be insensitive to your concerns. We simply want to do our job, which is to accurately, and completely, report events.
*****
Since this column concerns possible criticism of the newspaper for taking on responsibility for complete reporting, this quote seemed one worth sharing, and pondering:
“In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, The New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.”
Hugo L Black, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court,
On the publication of the Pentagon Papers, 1971
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 12:24 PM
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