TBT: To Name or Not, Should It Even Be a Question?
In an Editor's Note Column from 2006, I Consider the Ethics of IDing Suspects, a Topic That Continues to Be Relevant
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver ran a segment on police in the media that asked a lot of important questions about how news organizations present crime news.
Because crime coverage is cheap and sexy — “if it bleeds, it leads” is a cliche for a reason — and because police departments usually are only too happy to provide press releases about arrests designed to make the departments look good, most local media runs police stories only from the police perspective. This, as Oliver says, skews the coverage and ultimately plays up old racial and ethnic stereotypes, resulting in the reinforcement of systemic prejudices against Blacks and Latinos.
Oliver pointed to stats showing that a quarter of New York City’s population is Black; half of crimes are committed by Blacks, who tend to be poorer; while three quarters of all crime stories on New York TV feature Black assailants.
The repeated drum beat about crime and its representation as minority driven drives policy making and political campaigns. In New York, the Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin is attacking incumbent Kathy Hochul on the issue — crime is up, but remains at nearly historic lows. His attacks, however, seem to be gaining some traction because of the relentless coverage of crime and the presentation of isolated incidents as if they are part of a larger trend.
We began discussing this in my introductory journalism class, asking what responsibilities we have a journalists in reporting crime. What is important for the reader to know? Do we have a responsibility to protect the accused? Exactly what is the role we should play in this debate? And does it matter where we practice our journalism?
A piece posted by the Ryerson Journalism Research Centre in Canada outlined some of the cultural differences that drive approaches to these questions.
Naming victims and suspects in serious crimes is the default approach in North America, a practice meant to support the public’s right to know critical information about their community. But in some areas of Europe, not identifying people in news stories is meant to serve as a way to rehabilitate people and their reputations.
Romayne Smith Fullerton, an assistant professor of Information and Media Studies at Western University, has been working with Maggie Jones Patterson, a journalism professor from Duquesne University in Pennsylvania, to study “how culture and journalism ethics shape crime reporting.”
The American default — “naming someone in a serious crime story” — affects more than just the accused. It “automatically involves family and friends’ reputations as well, which can be detrimental to criminals making efforts to rehabilitate, and can re-traumatize family members who have lost someone, says Fullerton.”
The presumption of innocence in European coverage extends to their treatment in the press, which can “other” someone accused of a crime, separating them and isolating them. The accused, she says, “deserve every benefit of the doubt, and media coverage can be like punishment.”
“In the United States,” where there is more value placed on informing the public about everything, “that’s impossible,” said Fullerton.
“If you have a record, you’re not going to work. So it’s very difficult to rejoin [society] after you’ve been othered,” she said. “If you just say that person is a monster instead of a citizen, then you don’t need to take social responsibility for the fact that culture, economics, and education create criminals.”
It’s an issue we’ve been grappling with for decades in the industry. This 2006 Editor’s Note column considered the question of when suspects should be named and outlined for readers of the now-defunct South Brunswick Post what our policies were, using the release of the name of a “person of interest” in the murder of Imette St. Guillen in New York.
My thinking on this has evolved, and I am even more ambivalent about these issues than I had been when this ran. At the very least, I think journalists need to spend more time debating this, and considering how our actions affect all stakeholders in our stories — the community, the players in the story, their families and friends, the society more broadly — and ask ourselves what our goals are when reporting on crime. Are our efforts really designed to inform the public, or have we just internalized the "if-it-bleeds-it-leads” mentality that uses crime as a salacious entry point to get eyeballs on our sites, our print products, or our TV screens.
I’d like to hear from people, especially journalists, about this debate.
Here is my column from way back in the day:
Naming Suspects -- or Not
Finding a way to balance the readers’ need and desire for infomation with the ability to treat everyone fairly
I’ve been following the murder investigation of Imette St. Guillen in New York with a bit of trepidation.
The story first broke in late February when the body of a female student at John Jay College was found in Queens. At the time, I barely noticed I’m not a crime junkie and the basic contours of the case seemed to play out like so many others on television.
Then came March 6, when Channel 9 reported that police were investigating a bouncer at the bar in which the young woman was last seen. During the course of the report which included film of police vans outside his house, numerous officers going in and out and an interview with the bouncer’s aunt Channel 9 quoted unnamed police sources identifying the bouncer by name and saying that he was now the prime suspect in the murder.
That’s when I took notice. I watched as the bouncer’s aunt looking out of sorts responded to questions. Though she was obviously someone not used to dealing with the media, she ended up being the point-person on the story, the one who could confirm the bouncer’s identity.
And so the coverage went, with the rest of the New York media following Channel 9’s lead and running with the bouncer’s name (The New York Times was the last to do so on March 9).
The bouncer, of course, had not been charged with the crime he was being held on a parole violation, according to reports. And yet, thanks to the media feeding frenzy that followed, the bouncer’s name will forever be linked to the St. Guillen murder.
That’s what piqued my interest and troubled me.
Our policy here is pretty straightforward: We will not identify a suspect by name until charges are filed. But there are likely to be exceptions, as there are with almost any rule.
Donna Shaw, who teaches journalism classes at the College of New Jersey, says making a decision to use a name involves a delicate balancing act.
"There are no right-or-wrong, black-or-white answers," she said this week.
I called Ms. Shaw, who spent 25 years as a reporter with the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Inquirer, after reading a piece she wrote in the current issue of the American Journalism Review on the growing use in police stories of the term "persons of interest."
The term has come more and more into vogue in recent years, but it has never been defined, she says. Because of that, it often is viewed as little more than a euphemism for "suspect." Because of that, she says, reporters need to be very careful in its use.
During the research for her AJR piece, she came across dozens of people in more than 40 cases who were referred to as "persons of interest," most of whom were identified by name. As of her December deadline, fewer than half had been charged with any crimes and at least seven were exonerated.
"If we’re talking about a 50-50 chance that someone is innocent, or even 40-60 or 30-70 if we are going to skewer someone in print and there is that much of a possibility that he did nothing wrong, then we have to be real careful," she said.
There are times, she said, when naming a suspect or a "person of interest" is warranted. She tells the story of Robert Lutner, who was identified by police as a "person of interest" in the murder of three (a mother, her boyfriend and her 13-year-old son) in Idaho. He was later exonerated.
Mr. Lutner apparently was the last person to see the victims alive and the women’s other two children, who had gone missing. News reporters in the area, quoted in Ms. Shaw’s story, said police believed that Mr. Lutner could help them find the kids, but that they had to find him first.
Given that, Ms. Shaw told me, "how do you not name the guy?"
Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, called it (in Ms. Shaw’s AJR piece) "the extenuating-circumstances test." This involves the balancing of competing principles: Our responsibility as journalists to inform the public and our responsibility to be fair.
My own sense following it from the outside is that the St. Guillen case did not meet the threshold. The bouncer was in custody already on a parole violation and did not pose a threat to anyone.
Was there an interest in knowing who the suspect was? Of course. But was there a need? That’s at best debatable especially when you consider that most people assume that the police would not be identifying a suspect unless they thought he was guilty.
I would like to say I wouldn’t have run the name, at least not right away, but I can’t be sure. I know other questions might ultimately color my decision-making the pressure of competition, for instance, should not be understated.
In the end, however, we have to find a way to balance the readers’ need and desire for information with our ability to treat everyone we deal with in as fair a manner as possible.
"I think the bottom line for me, when writing these kinds of stories, is to think to yourself, ‘How will I feel down the road if he didn’t do it?’" Ms. Shaw says.
It doesn’t mean we should spike the story or go soft on anyone. Rather, we just need to be sure that we understand the impact our story will have and can be ready to defend it.
This is a tough one, to be sure. Problem is, journalists essentially have to rely on the police and lousy justice system not only for information but also who is a suspect and who gets charged—which could be anyone they feel like. Journalists showing more humanity in their work (especially on the local, police-blotter-driven level) can surely help, but I don't think think there's a single solution, as Shaw alludes to in your 2006 column. Journalists will have to make judgment calls. It's also a two-way street; we need a more critically thinking public (for a slew of reasons, and also the tallest of orders) that doesn't simply take police accounts and associated news reports as gospel. "This person is charged; they must be guilty."
This quote struck me:
“In the United States,” where there is more value placed on informing the public about everything, “that’s impossible,” said Fullerton."
It's only half true. There are power dynamics at play. There's value on informing the public about everything when it comes to historically less powerful, marginalized people because our society deems them less worthy of privacy or the benefit of the doubt. There isn't this same value on widespread reporting about how police departments are generally subpar in stopping crime and bringing criminals to justice (as defined by our government). If the public were truly informed consistently about the bumbling (at best) nature of policing and stopped thinking of these people as superhuman, heroic figures, a person's life might not be forever marred by being named in a criminal case. The public would understand that innocent people get victimized by police and the justice system every day because they're inept, racist, and structured only to keep power concentrated in as few hands as possible.
Basically, it's too large and systemic an issue for it fall squarely on the shoulders of journalists. But we do also need journalists to be more cynical and critical of power, even as the powerful act as their most consistent sources of (mis)information.
I may have gone off the rails of the original post here. Ha.