‘I don’t know how you sleep at night…’: Journalism Ethics 101

Wow, what a week. Awful, tragic news — and editorial judgment calls for our news staff.

On the one hand, it’s ‘exciting’ and energizing to have breaking news to cover, in an area where we blessedly have relatively little major crime, etc. compared to bigger cities.

Still, it can be frustrating when people think we make every decision based on whose lives we can invade or pain we can exploit.

It’s not true, but to be defensive in such situations only makes a difficult situation worse.

When someone dies in an awful way, we need to try to tell how they died – but more importantly, how they lived.

We don’t, contrary to the critics’ claims, go ringing up or knocking on the door of every crime victim, stick a camera and mike in their face and say, ‘How do you feel?”

The worst calls I’ve ever made are to folks in pain. I always hope and pray a family friend or representative will answer the phone, that those dealing with tragedy have been helped by others who are taking our inevitable calls for a photo, word of a fund in their name, etc.

A Bend man died this week in an example of the awfully named term, ‘Freak accident’ – a tree slammed down on the van in which he was sleeping. A Roseburg TV station kindly shared photos clearly taken hours after the discovery (tree was off the van and cut up etc.)

Still, it was shocking. Not graphic or lurid, but jolting.

We used the photos. A few close friends asked ‘have you no shame,’ etc.

After a day, I removed the photos from our front page. I can always see both sides of these things. The image was known, and to put his smiling face there again seemed right, and we followed with another story talking to friends about how he lived.

Then there’s the awful possible murder-suicide in Bend.

Facebook has two sides for people – the private one only friends can see, and the public one anyone can see using a search box.

We found two heartbreakingly normal photos of the family on the mother’s and father’s Facebook pages.

We used them and soon heard from a very upset family member.

I tried, best I could, not to get defensive, and to explain why we felt they were OK and even good to use – again, as I say, to show how folks live, not just how they die.

It didn’t end with a slammed-down phone, so I should be grateful.

But then came the note today, saying “shame on you” and asking why we felt it was OK to put the photos (and names – hey, we waited almost a full day to use the names, when property tax records indicated the homeowners and the paper felt fine running that right away – we waited until police issued the names to be sure family members were notified first.)

But Facebook is a public source of info, and we wanted to share MORE than names – to tell who these people are. In the immediate aftermath of tragedy, that is a very difficult time to glean those details, and we’re more successful in some cases than others.

But I hope that, God forbid, I ever face such a tragedy, I’ll understand why the media is doing what it’s doing – unless we/they cross the line, and then I also hope I’d make my point without lashing out. But it’s human, and we all are that.

We don’t revel in others’ pain, nor wish to intrude on a family’s grief. I have been deleting many comments that go too far in supposition or worse (man, there are some scary folks out there). But … it’s tough, and we have to try to be both sensitive and consistent. I hope and pray most folks understand that.

The ‘right’ to use info or a photo or the like doesn’t always clash with the issue of ‘rightness’ (propriety), but it can. Just now, police passed along the family’s request to remove info gleaned from public Facebook pages from the story. They are distraught, but I can’t help thinking they have far bigger things to be distraught about.

These were not damning or in any way negative pieces of information about the family – in fact, they were heartbreakingly normal and upbeat. But of course, I removed them, after touching base with the news director on his call on the issue.

But as I said, it’s ‘right’ vs. ‘rightness.’ Tough balancing act for all concerned in such terrible cases.

May you never be in such a situation – but may you also think about it whenever you make info publicly available, intentionally or otherwise. As society and the definition of privacy evolves, maybe, just maybe it’ll be less of an issue. I’m not expecting it, though.