Policy Corner: Our guidelines for reporting on unhelpful behavior

At the Daily Herald we take our commitment to the communities we serve seriously. We want to be good citizens of the suburbs. We want to make things better - not worse.

With that in mind, we are mindful of reporting on behavior that might encourage others to follow suit.

Our goal is to encourage positive behavior and discourage negative behavior.

That's overly simplistic. We have established some guidelines to discourage copycat behavior, but every story is different so it's more about asking ourselves whether reporting on something is likely to cause more of the same.

Reporting on vandalism is fairly cut and dried. I cringed the other day when I saw a local TV station broadcast lingering over images of graffiti on Chicago dining tents. The report even included the names of the groups that likely had done the tagging.

That's free advertising for gangs and not something we want to do. Publishing images of graffiti begets more graffiti.

When we do report on this, we almost never publish a photo of it or name the group responsible. We focus on the fact a crime was committed.

We ran a photo of a swastika recently, however, in the context of a hate crime. That's a different kind of story.

We're circumspect about reporting on individual suicides. This is a much greater concern for us, because the tendency for people to exhibit copycat behavior is strong - and the results cannot simply be painted over.

There must be extenuating circumstances for us to report on a suicide.