Category Archives: Minimizing Harm

News or Painful Reminders?

Juveniles, Media, Minimizing Harm, ,

By Casey Bukro

News media were divided on whether the the 911 audio recordings in the Newtown, Conn. shootings a year ago that left 26 dead were newsworthy.

That might say something about the ethical sophistication with which the media are judging the news.

Adam Lanza, 20, went to the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, and fatally shot 20 children and six educators before killing himself. Earlier, Lanza had killed his mother at home.

A year after the shootings, a Connecticut judge ruled that the 911 audio recordings of the event should be released.

“There’s still shooting going on. Please!” said a caller, identified as Custodian Rick Thorne, who was among those  who could be heard pleading for help.

CNN and Fox News broadcast parts of the recordings. CBS said it would use some audio clips. ABC and NBC decided against broadcasting or posting any of the recordings.

Many local residents and officials were against broadcasting the clips.

“I don’t understand the reasoning for the general public to hear them,” said Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis, a Sandy Hook first-grade teacher who survived the attack. “The families, they’ve already experienced such immeasurable pain and loss and sadness.”

These are the sort of decisions confronting news organizations at most disasters, weighing the benefit and harm of reporting details, sights and sounds.

The Sandy Hook 911 phone calls reveal the voices of scared callers, a calm and efficient 911 dispatcher and shots in the background. There are no screams or voices of children.

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s senior legal analyst, said it could be argued that the audio reports served a public service by showing how the 911 call-taker handled the calls.  Most of the callers were calm. Toobin believed the contents of the tapes were not as disturbing as the event they represented.

The shootings also were a major event in U.S. history, coming at a time when Congress was considering gun-control measures.

The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics encourages journalists to “minimize harm.”

Some local residents always are likely to see what the media do as intrusive.

Reuters reported that a hand-painted sign had been fastened to telephone pole saying:  “Vulture media, you got your tapes. Please leave.”

Eventually, the reporters do leave. Seldom is any thought given to the emotional toll they take with them after seeing the slaughter of children.

An Unattended Death Puts Newsroom to Test

Compassion, Minimizing Harm, , ,

By Lee Anne Peck

Should a news organization publish a dead man’s earlier prison sentence? A 36-year-old man, Kevin Benham, was discovered drowned by hikers in a wilderness area. The hikers tried to revive him but were unsuccessful. Benham’s death was ruled “unattended, ” and the coroner reported the death was not a suicide.

Benham had Huntington’s Disease, which is a hereditary, degenerative brain disorder; this disease has no cure. Take note: The disease also slowly diminishes a person’s ability to reason, walk and talk.  Benham’s biological mother and two brothers died from Huntington’s. The coroner noted that Benham most likely died from the disease.

As a reporter from the Adriondack Daily Enterprise began researching background information for a story and obituary on Benham, he came across information that Benham had served eight years in an Arizona prison for kidnapping a woman. He was also listed as a sexual predator. Benham’s lawyer had told the court about his client’s disease and tried to explain this is why Benham had kidnapped the girl.

After Benham served his sentence, he had returned home a year ago from Arizona.

Managing Editor Peter Crowley and his staff struggled with whether to print that information in the Sept. 26, 2013, afternoon edition  of the newspaper.  The story had already been published online without the prison sentence.

When I talked with Crowley, we discussed what his staff’s professional values were.  What good would printing the information do if Benham was already gone? What harm would happen to those who were left (his adopted family)?

The rival paper, The (Plattsburgh) Press Republican, did print the prison sentence and also reported that Benham had been registered locally as a sex offender.

In the end, the Daily Enterprise never did print the prison sentence information. I told Crowley I agreed with him:  The reporting of the prison sentence would serve no purpose at this point.

See how two competing newspapers covered this same story:

Link to Adirondack Daily Enterprise:
http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/539095/Police-identify-local-man-who-died-in-High-Peaks.html?nav=5008
The Press Republican of Plattsburgh link:
http://pressrepublican.com/0100_news/x1442571330/Saranac-Lake-man-drowns-in-Marcy-Brook

Pitfalls of Identifying Bystanders as Bombers

Crowdsourcing, Libel, Privacy, , , , , ,

By Casey Bukro

Stupidity is not a crime, and ethical lapses usually will not land you in jail.

But they have consequences, as the New York Post learned when two men sued the tabloid newspaper for showing them in a front-page photo at the height of the search for Boston Marathon Bombing suspects, with a “Bag Men” headline.

CNN reported that the men, 16 and 24-years old, accused the Post of libel, negligent infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy for showing them standing next to each other in the April 18 edition. Also displayed in large letters on the photo were the words: “Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.” The photo appeared three days after the Boston bombing, making it appear that the FBI were searching for them. One of them wore a backpack.

Post editor Col Allan said the Post did not identify the men as “suspects.”

Huffington Post reported outrage at the use of the photo, with some calling it “a new low” and “appalling.”

Later that day, authorities released photos of Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

NBCNEWS.com reported that the two innocent men were stunned to see themselves pictured on the front page of the tabloid and one of them suffered a panic attack.

Minimize harm, advises the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics. And be judicious, it says, about naming criminal suspects before they are charged. Though the two men were not  named by the Post, it’s an apt comparison when showing their faces.

The New York Post photo is considered an example in a series of errors and false reports that were rampant during the frenzy of trying to learn motives for the bombing, and who did it.

Crowd sourcing, it turned out, was not as valuable as its supporters might have supposed. Authorities essentially told the public they were not interested in the flood of iPhone photos that were offered of people and things considered suspicious. Instead, authorities zeroed in on the Tsarnaev brothers by using highly sophisticated identification technology.

There’s one more questionable thing about that New York Post photo, and that’s the use of the words “Bag Men.” You don’t have to be from Chicago or New York to know “bag man” is slang for a person who collects money for racketeers, or a mob errand boy.

It was bad enough that two innocent men were linked falsely with the Boston bombing. It got worse when they were tainted with language that implied criminal activity. Words hurt. They also can get you sued.