Once more, our ethics thrown out the window
Oops. Sorry about that.
One of the worst journalistic ethical debacles in memory was generated by the naming of a security guard as a suspect in the Atlanta bombing.
The debate rages.
Jeff Greenfield, ABC-TV: “If this guy didn’t do it, his life is changed forever - for the worse.
“And there is nothing he can do about it. He can’t sue. Nothing.”
What if he is charged with the crime?:
“Where could he get a fair trial? How could you find a juror who hasn’t read stories practically convicting him?”
The old-fashioned newspaper ethic is you don’t identify a suspect of a crime unless he or she is formally charged.
The reason is that you can cause irreparable harm to the accused if he or she is innocent.
The lapse of ethics in the Atlanta bombing perfectly illustrates the justification for this ethical standard.
Virtually every major newspaper in the country ran the name and picture of the suspect. My two favorite newspapers are the Daily Herald and the New York Times.
The Times handled the breaking story with one paragraph on page 1 referring to an inside story which dealt with the media handling of the case. Through this device, the Times did identify the suspect and report the evidence against him.
The Daily Herald did not print his name nor run his picture when the story broke. Our policy is discussed at length in Thursday’s and today’s papers.
The networks and publications are in a frenzy of explanations and apologies and rationalizations for why they virtually tried and convicted the man.
The main cop-out is that “our competition was using the story, so we had to go with it or look foolish.”
Does the Herald look foolish for sticking to ethics the first day? Today I’m kind of proud.
No matter how this turns out, this is another black eye for Atlanta. Their major newspaper, the Journal- Constitution, broke the story.
That gave the throngs of TV and radio and international media the green light to go with the story. Most TV and radio news originates in newspapers, and the Journal-Constitution gave validity to the story.
According to the current soul-searching, all the editors and producers were aware of the danger of naming the suspect. And to a man (and woman) they weaseled, and ran their stories with the usual cliches and qualifications in the unlikely event that their suspect wasn’t the criminal after all.
The most glamorous and highly paid producers and performers in broadcasting have the least experience on the street, where you learn journalism the hard way.
The lesson was burned into me when I was a young reporter.
A little girl, Suzanne Degnan, was murdered. The police found her dismembered body in the basement of a North Side apartment.
As the police officers looked in horror at the body, the door opened and in walked the building janitor. The cops panicked. “Grab him!” they shouted. “That’s the man!”
I was in police headquarters when they brought in the janitor, Hector Verburgh, a dour, stoical loner.
The police really gave Verburgh a going-over, without leaving bruises. They hung him out the window.
The newspapers carried lengthy stories about him and his background and life and habits and probable guilt.
He was innocent, of course. He was a tough old bird and never cracked. Subsequently a young University of Chicago student, William Heirens, was found guilty of the crime.
As far as we know, the Atlanta guard was guilty of one Atlanta crime - Pepsi cans were found in his pickup truck.