Bob CollinsMedia analyst David Brauer has a fascinating article at MinnPost about media policies in printing or broadcasting the name of suspects who have not been officially charged with a crime. The issue is too important for you to settle for my paraphrasing, so please be sure to read the post. Essentially, in the really-short-shelf-life news era of the Internet, competitive rationale is responsible for an apparent increase in naming the names of suspects in cases where the suspect has not yet been charged.
Brauer cites the policies of WCCO as an example. And he includes the policies outlined by the MPR news director, Bill Wareham.
Overall, stations and newspapers say they are reluctant to name suspects until they are charged out of a sense of “fairness.” The theory is once they’re charged, their names become fair game. It’s an argument, though, that has some logical flaws. Does being charged make it more likely the suspect “did it?” Does not having enough legal evidence against a suspect mean he (or she) didn’t?
Perhaps Brauer is right that competitive juices whipped into a frenzy by the Internet are at work here. But there’s another, less interesting, factor.
Here’s Scott Libin’s response to me in an article on the subject that I wrote in 1999, after some media — including MPR — refused to run Donald Blom’s name, the then-suspect in the Katie Poirier case.
“What other elements do you omit?” he asks.”Do you not explain that he had a home in the area? If you do explain it, but you don’t identify him, then don’t you cast negative light potentially on everybody on that approximate description who has a home in the area? I don’t think it’s always the moral high ground to withhold information.”
And here’s Libin’s comments to Brauer in his current article:
“We now start from the premise that reporting truths is our primary obligation, and that we withhold such information only for a good reason.”
There’s really no detectable shift in position by Libin. The only difference is that Libin worked at Channel 5 when he made his comments to me, and now he’s running the WCCO newsroom.
But even back in 1999, the then-news director at WCCO, Ted Canova, made it clear that naming suspects or not naming suspects was not an inviolate policy at his station.
“The big dilemma is if he’s not charged. In one way we would look very credible that here’s a man that everybody else has named and identified, but the cops didn’t have enough to charge him. And we were the only ones to protect his privacy and his reputation. On the other hand, knowing what we know about what he’s suspected of doing, the dilemma is: he could be a public threat. If he’s a public threat, then we have a dilemma over whether to name him.”
Brauer says WCCO staffers, citing longtime cop beat reporter Carolyn Lowe, are a little upset concerned about the “new” policy. Do they not remember their performance in the Brad Dunlap story? He was never charged in the 1995 disappearance and murder of his wife. But that didn’t stop the media, including Lowe, from naming his as a suspect. There’s fairness. And then there’s juicy news. (Disclaimer: MPR named Dunlap, too.)
And that’s the reality in most newsrooms I’ve found. While there may be a policy, it’s a flexible one.
Is it about fairness? Not really. Mostly it’s about the media covering its behind in case they do have the wrong guy. If it were about fairness, then everyone would abide by Minnesota News Council boss Gary Gilson who told me in that original article that news organizations shouldn’t release a name until the person is found guilty.
And all that idea will get you in a newsroom is a funny look.
