What gives at Yes!Weekly? Their investigative reporting ranges from Woodward and Bernstein-like to being led around by the nose by defense attorneys. Their editorial decisions from impressive to sub-National Enquirer. I wish they'd find their footing and stand tall instead of bending to the crazy and going off the rails from time to time.
This week they have an interesting article about DWI cases getting dismissed for reportedly unacceptable reasons ranging from incompetence in the DA's office to apparent fraud.
Unable to confidently let the article stand on its merits, however, Yes! found it necessary to publish the mug shots of the innocent people whose cases were dismissed. It is shameful sensationalism. It is yellow journalism.
I asked Yes! editor Brian Clarey to explain why he published the mug shots of people whose cases were dismissed. His explanation was that these people's cases were "dismissed under suspicious circumstances, including procedural errors, poor/incomplete documentation and one case of documented fraud." That may be true (although "documented fraud" is a reach), but there is zero indication that the people whose cases were dismissed were in any way responsible for the procedural errors or incomplete documentation. They are, in fact, innocents who Yes! justifies subjecting to public humiliation because of the bad acts of others.
Clarey said that his paper did not decide to publish these photos "lightly" or "without serious discussion." So what? No matter how seriously considered, the decision reached was wrong and the explanation offered deficient. The people whose pictures belong attached to the article are those Yes! implicates as responsible for the errors and misdeeds, not the innocent bystanders.
Reporting the "blood alcohol concentration" of those whose cases were dismissed is also malpractice. Since these people never had their cases go to trial, the claims against them remain simply allegations, allegations that were never adjudicated and, therefore, not entitled to be reported as facts. The alcohol levels, reported as fact by Yes!, are just readings from a machine. Importer calibration, operator error, subsequent and more accurate blood tests with different results are possible refutations of this number. For a news organization to report a law enforcement accusation as a fact, when it is merely an allegation, is astoundingly objectionable.
Come on Yes! You might think crap like this spices up your reporting. It doesn't. It colors it yellow.
I agree Roch. That was my first reaction to the article as well.
ReplyDeleteThe photos were not necessary to the article, and they imply that somehow the guilty got away.
Maybe some of them did, but this was highly irresponsible of YES!
It would be one thing if the cases were pending, like a murder case, quite another when the case is over and the charges are dismissed.
I maybe wrong, but I don't remember seeing Yes print the photos of the latin kings who "got away" with kidnapping and murder.
ReplyDeletebrandonB
Sam, you put it well. I agree with your characterization even more now that I've seen the print version with the mug shots on the cover and a sub head of how these people "got out of" DWI charges. I won't be surprised if Yes! ends up issuing an apology.
ReplyDeleteBrandon, Yes! does not, as a matter of course, publish the mug shots of anybody who has been arrested when their arrest is part of the story.
Yes weekly convicts these people on the front page of their rag all the while making a violent gang suspected of murder appear as victims of police brutality. It's ridiculous.
ReplyDeletebtw, ^^^ is me, brandonB
ReplyDeleteI agree this is an interesting argument because the charges have been dropped, but as a cop reporter I sometimes heard a version of this same argument from people who were upset that our paper printed their mug shots the day after they were arrested because, after all, they haven't been to trial and it's all just accusations until they're actually convicted. We were damaging their reputations based on nothing but a police report.
ReplyDeleteBut by that logic we'd never report blood alcohol levels, print any photos or even mention a person's name in connection with a crime unless and until they'd been convicted.
Unless I'm mistaken, Jorge Cornell has never been convicted of a crime in North Carolina. Almost everything he's been charged with has led to a dismissal. He - or one of his city council campaign people - made the argument to our city reporter that therefore the paper should not ask about or mention his various arrests, as he's an innocent citizen who happens to have been accused of various things by police who couldn't make charges stick.
It can be argued that running for office makes you a much more public figure than these DWI folks, but we're talking about a VERY narrow standard for publicly available information that can be published if we're disqualifying any information, evidence, mug-shots, etc, of anyone who hasn't been convicted.
All of which is to say, I guess, illustrating a story like this (or even doing it if there's some argument over whether you can even use names) is a conversation that has to happen carefully in newsrooms and everyone has to make their own decision about it.
And take the flak for those decisions, too.
I'll be thinking about what I would have done for the rest of the day now, probably.
I think you over-complicate the questions, Joe. You create room for a philosophical discussion by moving the discussion away from the particulars at hand. I'd like you to give your professional opinion on are these:
ReplyDelete1. Would you publish the mug shots of people after their cases have been dismissed? Take Cornell as an example, never convicted, cases dismissed, but a story mentions his arrests, if you'd do it like Yes!, you'd publish his mug shot, right?
2. Would you report the blood alcohol level in a police report as simply, without clarification, THE blood alcohol concentration? (When police say they found a suspect's finger prints on a weapon, do you report that the suspect's fingerprints were found on the weapon or do you report that police SAY they've found the suspect's fingerprints on the weapon until you have some additional substantiation?)
BAC as contained in a court file or on a citation is also only an allegation, not a fact. The results of such tests are routinely questioned and can be thrown out for various reasons.
ReplyDeleteYou need to teach this lesson to your buddy, Keith. He obviously doesn't get it! Nice post
ReplyDeleteRoch:
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't do either of those things that way, no.
But I came up writing for small and mid-sized daily newspapers, which have a lot of editorial differences from alt-weeklies, be they Yes Weekly or the Rhino Times, the most important being that they're often much more conservative on questions like these.
Reminds of this story....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9003241
The online article doesn't do it justice however, since the news paper, along with names, ages, and addresses, post all 40 mug shots.
One of the men committed suicide a few days later.