Good decisions in tough calls

Editors need to make tough calls in handling sensitive stories, particularly in small towns where the editor and her staff are well known to readers and sources. You need to handle these stories with a four-pronged approach:

• Understand and articulate your newspaper’s policies and values so that your decisions follow consistent ethical principles.
• Apply those principles to individual decisions with a commitment to reporting the truth and to minimizing harm.
• Do not allow favoritism to influence your decisions.
• Explain your underlying values and your decisions to your readers.

Develop policies and values

• Adopt an ethics policy. You may be too busy to develop your own ethics code, but you can adopt or adapt an existing statement, such as the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, the Guiding Principles developed by Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute or the National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics. You may want to add your own individual policies on matters such as identifying victims of sexual abuse or publishing photos showing dead bodies or body parts. Consider whether standards should be absolute or allow exceptions for compelling reasons.
• Educate the staff about your values. Make sure your staff knows your policy. Give a copy to every new staff member and discuss it with your full staff and with individual members. Involve your staff in the development of your policy. You will need to make the final decisions. But staff members might raise some valid concerns you had not considered. And if the staff had input in development of the policy, they will support it more as your collective values rather than as rules imposed by the boss.
• Tell readers about your values. Educate readers about your ethical principles. When you adopt an ethics policy or make changes in your policy, write a column to inform your readers (or to seek their input while you’re developing it). When national stories illustrate ethical principles that you support or that conflict with yours, note them in columns that help readers understand your principles in a less emotional context than the local stories where you will be applying them. Post your policy on your web site. As you write columns dealing with ethics, post them to the web site, too. Leave them there, with links from your ethics code. (No, they won’t get much traffic, but the transparency will help you when you make unpopular decisions.)

Report the truth

Your default setting should be to report what’s true and newsworthy. Always demand a compelling reason to override this principle. And in the face of a compelling reason, seek a way to print as much of the truth as possible as quickly as possible.

• Be sure of your facts. In sensitive stories, you will defend your decisions on the basis of this principle that your first obligation is to report the truth. So be sure of your facts before you make your decision. The editor should ask the reporter how she knows the facts she is reporting and how she has verified them. Your credibility is on the line with every fact you report in your paper. But the stakes increase for sensitive stories and your vigilance should increase.
• Why is this newsworthy? Sometimes facts that are true still are not newsworthy. Ask yourself and your staff what the public’s interest in this story is. If the story bears on public health or safety or on accountability of government officials or other powerful people, you have a strong case and you raise the threshold for any compelling reason that might persuade you to hold the story or withhold some of the facts. If the public interest is more a matter of curiosity, you should be more open to compelling reasons to withhold some or all of the story. Keep in mind that your paper routinely publishes lots of information that doesn’t particularly serve “the public’s right to know.” Your sports, features and business sections primarily publish information that feeds the public curiosity. This is valid, important journalism and your preference should still be to publish the story, with a fairly high threshold for deciding not to publish. But the threshold is even higher in matters of health, safety or accountability.
• What are the alternatives? Your choice is not simply to publish or not. Consider whether you can serve the public interest by publishing the most important facts but withholding some of the sensitive facts. For instance, the public interest certainly calls for reporting of a rape. But you might withhold some details of the crime out of sensitivity to the victim. In a case of incest, you might report the crime and identify the defendant, but not report his relationship to the victim, because that would identify her.
• Lying is not an alternative. You can decide not to report all the facts. But don’t knowingly report false or misleading information. Lies will damage your credibility more than reporting uncomfortable truths.

Minimize harm

Journalism ethics call on us to minimize harm as well as reporting the truth. These two important and valid principles often come into conflict. Keep in mind that ethics don’t call on you to avoid or eliminate harm. Sometimes reporting the facts will harm some people in your community. Consider that harm and seek ways to minimize it while still reporting the truth.

• Juveniles deserve consideration. Much of the reporting in a community newspaper tells the stories of the youths of the community. While much of that news is positive, such as sports news, juveniles also show up in crime news as victims and suspects. Because children have less control over their lives and are not as able to handle public attention, some newspapers will have policies of not naming juvenile victims or defendants, except in rare cases. Sports suspensions present difficult situations because federal laws may prevent school officials from releasing information, but an athlete’s absence may be obvious to the community. The suspension may also be well known on the community rumor mill. Youths who seek the spotlight through participation in sport, then risk embarrassment by breaking rules, should be able to handle the reporting of their offenses. The gossip that accompanies such incidents also presents an argument for publication: Much of the community knows the basic facts anyway and your reporting can clarify misinformation. Beware, though, of treating the rumor mill as an accurate source of information.
• Sexual assaults deserve special handling. Sexual abuse carries a stigma in society that is beyond the control of the local newspaper editor. In light of that stigma, many editors respect the privacy of victims of sexual assaults by not publishing the names of accusers. Advocates for sexual assault victims often say that publishing names of accusers would keep victims from reporting sexual assaults. However, some editors – and some victims – believe such policies actually help perpetuate the stigma. Consider an approach of not identifying victims routinely but of seeking opportunities to tell the stories of victims who are willing to be identified. In a criminal case, the pain may be too raw for a victim to agree to an interview right after the crime. But if a case goes through the judicial process, she may feel like speaking publicly after the trial or after a prosecutor allows a plea bargain. A counseling service might help you connect with victims willing to speak about the issue for an enterprise story or when rape is in the news for some reason. Decide whether you want to identify accusers who file lawsuits seeking damages for sexual assault claims or accusers whose claims are rejected by juries or prosecutors. Keep in mind that a not-guilty verdict doesn’t necessarily mean that the accuser was lying, just that the prosecution was unable to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a crime that seldom has witnesses.

Missing children

Missing children present difficult decisions. When the child is missing, identification and publication of photographs is part of the effort to locate the child. You might run name, photograph, description and circumstances of disappearance on your web site or in the paper. The news value is strong. The public service is clear. But how do you handle reporting when the child is rescued if she has been sexually assaulted? Aly Colón of the Poynter Institute notes that you can’t unring the bell, but you can stop ringing it. You need to report on the charges against her abductor. But once you have reported her release, you don’t have to keep naming her as the victim in future reporting on the case against the abuser.

Never say no for someone else

The compassion and closeness of a small town may lead you or a reporter on your staff to think you should leave grieving relatives alone and write stories about tragic incidents without bothering them. This is cowardly and arrogant. Some family members will choose not to talk to you and they have that right. But some family members – even a parent or spouse – welcome the chance to tell the world about this person they loved. You shouldn’t make that decision for them. Teach your staff how to approach families respectfully, not demanding comment but telling them you want to give them the opportunity to tell their stories. The mother may be too distraught to talk to you, but a sibling or aunt can give you some valuable insight or amusing stories about the victim. You’re better off dealing gracefully with the angry turndown than having to explain the next day why you wrote the story about the dead teen-ager without any input from those who knew him best.

Disturbing photos

Some photographs are highly newsworthy but so disturbing that you should decide against using them or give them special handling.

• Death and gore. Many editors have strong policies against publishing photographs of dead bodies, body parts and bleeding victims of tragic incidents. Discuss with your staff and readers what should and shouldn’t be shown: Is the whole body off limits? What about body parts, where most of the body is obscured, such as by emergency crews huddled over the body? What about a body covered by a sheet? What about an open casket? What about a pool of blood? What if the person survived? What extenuating circumstances might make you run a disturbing photo? If the photo depicts heroic efforts to save the person, does that justify showing some of the body? What if you can’t see much of the body? What if the incident was highly public?
• Grief and fear. Sometimes photographers capture powerful, newsworthy images that depict the anguish of events you cover, as loved ones hear or await tragic news or as people watch their home burn or watch rescue efforts. Even when these emotions are on public display, these photographs feel like an invasion of privacy to some readers and to the subjects. Discuss with your photographers how you should handle these photos and what might justify exceptions.
• Should you ask or alert the family? If you are considering publishing a disturbing photograph, perhaps the family needs to be part of the conversation, if they wish. You tell them why you are considering publishing the photograph and tell them you want to hear their reaction before you decide. They may not want to deal with you at all. They may alert you to some family member’s fragile emotional condition or physical health. They may look at the photograph and find some comfort in the heroic rescue effort that it depicts. You don’t need and shouldn’t seek the family’s permission to run the photograph. But if you can’t face the family and tell them why you would publish the photograph, you shouldn’t run it. And if the family does not object to publication, you might note that in a column explaining your difficult decision.
• Consider the play. If you decide to publish a disturbing photograph, be sure to consider carefully how you play the photo. Page-one play will seem like sensationalizing to some readers. Sometimes it will be better to play a less-disturbing photo on the front page, with cutlines warning of the content of an inside photo. Or maybe the disturbing photo should be presented online, with a disclaimer that prevents anyone from opening it without understanding the nature of the photo.

Err on the side of safety

Some decisions that people make affect their safety. The consequences of these actions are a matter of public interests. Newspapers should report them routinely. Beware of letting compassion for grieving relatives override your obligation to the public safety. Failure to use seat belts, motorcycle helmets and child seats can kill you. Drinking before you drive a car, fly a plane or pilot a boat endangers yourself and others. If you don’t routinely report whether seat belts, motorcycle helmets, child safety seats or alcohol were used in fatal accidents, you should reconsider that policy and discuss it with your staff and your community. You might withhold such facts out of understandable compassion for grieving relatives. But when you report after a tragic accident that parents didn’t use a child safety seat or that a motorist didn’t use seat belts, you provide an important reminder to other parents and drivers. If you don’t report these things routinely, make sure you report annually on the statistics for your community: How many fatal accidents did you have and how many involved alcohol, helmets, etc.

Covering suicide

 As with sexual assaults, suicides are too sensitive for one-size-fits-all rules. Wherever your inclination lies, you should seriously consider the arguments for the opposite point of view, because both extremes of suicide coverage are based on valid arguments.

If your inclination is to not report suicides, you probably are guided by understandable compassion. You can certainly argue that any benefit in reporting the cause of death is outweighed by the pain to the family in making this fact public at such a difficult time. But understand also that you are failing to report on a major social issue and one of the leading causes of death in your community. If you don’t report suicides as news stories, make an effort occasionally to write enterprise stories about suicide in your community, working with willing families who have had more time to address their grief and feel a need to share their stories. Consider and discuss with your staff (and possibly with the community) what circumstances might justify reporting a suicide – the person’s prominence, a related crime, a public suicide (or attempted or threatened suicide), multiple suicides. Understand that the fact of the suicide will be well known in many cases. Your decision not to report what people know may feed suspicions that you play favorites (even if you routinely don’t report suicides, the suicides of prominent people will be more widely known in the rumor mill). Don’t knowingly report a false cause of death. If your obituaries or news stories about local deaths routinely report the cause of death, just withhold that fact in suicide cases, rather than reporting bogus causes of death that will undermine your credibility.

If you decide to report suicides routinely, you need to consider factors that might result in exceptions or that might affect your decision. If you don’t know immediately that a death was a suicide, but learn in a day or two, would you report this the same time as the funeral? In explaining a controversial decision to report a suicide, you might justify your decision to the public by claiming to report all suicides. But you don’t know that. You certainly don’t know about any people who commit suicide but succeed in making it appear to be an accident. You may not know about instances when family members persuade doctors or police to report a natural or accidental cause of death. The best you can say is that you report the suicides that you learn about.

Especially if you are inclined to report on all suicides, be aware that some research has shown a phenomenon known as “suicide contagion,” where attention to one suicide is believed to contribute to other suicides in the community. Suicides present valid reasons for newspapers to consider whether they should answer two of the basic questions we address in most news stories: Why and how. Suicide experts advise caution in reporting or speculating why a person killed himself or herself. Even if the person leaves a note, that may not be the full story. Immediate speculation about difficulties in the person’s life seldom tells the full picture, the experts say. They also worry about suggestions in news stories that a person killed himself because he was depressed or had been fired or was in marital or financial difficulty. This can imply to readers who are depressed or facing these situations that they are valid causes for suicide, the experts say. If you must address these issues, present them as facts, not as reasons for the suicide, which you can’t really know anyway. Experts also caution against reporting how people kill themselves, especially in detail, because they say that can be suggestive to troubled people as well.

If you have a strong reason to examine the apparent factors in a suicide, be sure to interview some counselors and give them a chance to say that those are not reasons to kill yourself. Even if these factors are not part of the story, consider whether you should interview counselors and publish information about getting help, such as hotline numbers, counselors and services that might help people with similar problems, such as debt counselors and mental health services.

Be sure to read the recommendations for news media coverage of suicide developed by the Centers for Disease Control and several organizations involved in suicide research and prevention. Whether you follow the recommendations or not, you should consider the factors they raise. In some cases and on some stories, the recommendations go further in the direction of restraint than some journalists will feel comfortable. But their cautions merit consideration and discussion. Among the reminders for journalists in the recommendations:

• “Research suggests that inadvertently romanticizing suicide or idealizing those who take their own lives by portraying suicide as a heroic or romantic act may encourage others to identify with the victim.
• “Exposure to suicide method through media reports can encourage vulnerable individuals to imitate it. Clinicians believe the danger is even greater if there is a detailed description of the method. Research indicates that detailed descriptions or pictures of the location or site of a suicide encourage imitation.
• “Presenting suicide as the inexplicable act of an otherwise healthy or high-achieving person may encourage identification with the victim.”

Strive for consistency

Some readers will unfairly accuse you of favoritism by cutting prominent people a break in sensitive stories. Others will unfairly accuse you of sensationalism for playing up private matters of prominent people. Policies that you publish and explain to readers will help you achieve the consistency that will build credibility. You will have to live with the sensationalism charge from time to time. Just like a minister, coach or school principal gets more play than a truck driver for an obituary or a retirement story, she’s going to get more play for an arrest. But make sure that favoritism charges are unfounded. As you allow exceptions to your policies, make sure that you’re not granting them just to people who have access to you and the publisher. The banker’s drunk-driving arrest is as newsworthy as a factory worker’s, probably more so. If you just report those arrests in the police blotter, it may seem like a small matter to leave out the item on a friend who’s asking a favor. But someone in town will know and word will spread that you play favorites. And if you or your publisher should be arrested for drunk driving, be sure that gets at least as prominent play as anyone in the community would receive.

Explain your decisions

Don’t wait until you are swamped by reader complaints to explain yourself. Explain policies as you make them, so loyal readers will understand some of your policies and know that you approach these decisions thoughtfully, regardless of whether they agree. And if you anticipate that a decision will be controversial, you can run an explanation, possibly as a column on your editorial page or possibly as an editor’s note with the story, the same day as the offending story or photograph.

You might even seek reader guidance. In an editor’s blog, you could present a choice to readers and ask for their advice (don’t put important decisions to a reader vote) on deadline. If the reaction against your preferred choice is strong, you should consider the readers’ arguments. You may not change your mind, but consideration of reader views can guide whether or how you explain to readers.

Sometimes a decision will be more controversial than you expected. You considered the decision carefully but didn’t explain it to the readers immediately because you didn’t feel it would be controversial. Explain it after the fact. You won’t win readers over to your point of view, but you will gain credibility and increase understanding as you explain your decisions.

Deal with your staff’s trauma

Covering traumatic stories can be difficult for your staff, especially in a small town where they may know the victims and/or their families. Have a staff meeting afterward to discuss issues that might be weighing on staff members. Offer professional counseling for staff members at company expense. Encourage a day off or a vacation if you think a staff members needs one. The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma can help your staff deal with the difficult aftermath of covering these stories.

Other helpful resources

Bob Steele’s “Guiding Principles for the Journalist”: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=36&aid=4349

Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

“Bad News, Good Judgment,” by Jim Pumarlo National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics: http://www.nppa.org/professional_development/business_practices/ethics.html

Matt Thompson’s “Two Suicides, Two Newsrooms, Two Decisions”: http://poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=61217

Recommendations for reporting on suicide from Centers for Disease Control, American Association of Suicidology et. al.: http://www.afsp.org/education/recommendations/5/1.htm

Kelly McBride’s “Covering Sexual Assault”: http://poynteronline.org/column.asp?id=53&aid=46832

Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma: http://www.dartcenter.org/

Victims and the Media Program: http://victims.jrn.msu.edu/