Tag: Central Oregon

Riding the news tide: Crimes covered, or not

We get all sorts of news tips and comments, as you can imagine. Some, well truly deserve no reply, not even a thanks. Rudeness can know no bounds, as you might expect. But I’m thrilled in little ways when I can provide an answer, a direction to an answer, offer up what someone needs, shed a little light.

“I just completed grand jury duty and I am wondering why you report on certain cases and don’t report on others,” a lady recently asked.

Oh man, that could fill a book or 3. Maybe one day it will. But in the meantime, we had a nice, non-confrontational exchange – and toward the end, I wrote that maybe I should blog about it, and she said, yes, I should – ‘it is so interesting.”

Well, I think so too. Some times I really do think the anger or frustration people feel about institutions such as, say, government or the media come from a lack of knowledge or understanding. Not always, of course, and I sure don’t want to talk down to or call folks’ ignorant. But some just crave some insight – a peek behind the curtain, you might say.

So here’s some expanded thoughts on what I had to say to that really good, thankfully nicely put, curious, non-accusatory question;-)

There are a host of factors that go into what stories get covered or don’t — sometimes ‘equal’ crimes or crashes or fires or the daily grist of breaking news make it into a broadcast or onto the Website or not simply because we do or don’t know about them. Again, for a variety of reasons – it may seem someone asks us every time they hear a siren or see a police car speeding somewhere, but some times those trees just fall in a part of the News Forest where they don’t make a sound, and people assume/presume we know when we don’t. (Then there are those who think we know everything and are upset when we don’t. Sorry, folks – we’re human too.)

The first in a string of judgment calls involves whether police put out a news release. And they may or may not put one out on, say, a minor or non-injury crash, depending on the circumstances of that crash, fire or what have you — or because they are so busy moving on to the next first-responder incident they never get around to it.

But I also noted that some crimes — abuse comes to mind – are not always reported due to policies ranging from federal privacy rules to not wanting to cause added woes when it involves a family member, for example. When police are turning to the public for any other potential victims – or the case is particularly high-profile (a gymnastics coach, a teacher etc.) or severe/disturbing –again, all judgment calls that might be different from one day to the next, depending in part on how many other things are going on that day.

Oh, I should throw in here one response from my kind correspondent, who said that after serving on the grand jury, she “learned so much about the law and, sadly, about our community, living in Bend, seeing the news was the only crime I knew about, but it appears there is quite a bit more going on here than I ever could have imagined.”

A rude awakening, indeed, and bound to change your perspective on your community. Hopefully not to raise the fear level, but a real eye-opener.

I told her I was sure it was “a window into a sad, very troubling part of our community.”

And she said – in what I took as an honest misunderstanding — “I guess I just thought that if an arrest was made you were allowed to report on it. Interesting that you need permission to do that from the police department or the DA. … I am just trying to figure out how all this works.”

My journalistic senses bristled and I answered – fast — ‘No, no, I never said ALLOWED. It’s more like … well, look at the court dockets of dozens of cases a single day. We don’t ONLY report the ones police do news releases on, but those are the bigger ones – robberies, break-ins, murders etc.”

And my reply also included a long-standing line I use that can sound like a cop-out but is just the basic truth: “For every story (crime or otherwise) we get to, there are hundreds, if not thousands we don’t. There are investigative reasons police or prosecutors might not release some information before trial. And lots of other factors come into play.”

I … we should never ever assume people know all that. As for whether you/they believe it – that we don’t choose which stories to do based on who we know and are trying to hurt or curry favor with, as opposed to what’s the most interesting to any given reporter on any given day — well, we can only control what we report, not how it’s received. I often say I take 100 percent credit (or blame) for what’s on the lines I write. What people read between them often has far more to do with what views and other “baggage” they bring to a story than what we write or say.

The grand juror got what I was saying, adding that she’d always watched our news “and I feel better knowing that you all are ethical in your reporting. I hope that will continue.”

“And I also want to say that I was very impressed with the officers and the DA’s office. They are very professional and human and do a wonderful job in our community.”

And thus the exchange ended. And I was reminded that some times, folks just need a bit of explanation about how things work to overcome misconceptions, assumptions or just working in a knowledge vacuum that can lead to all sorts of negative things.

Not always, of course. Many people are dead-set in their bunker mentalities of the us vs. them, and believe everyone has an angle to make someone look good or bad, that we focus on the bad side of news to make a buck rather than it just being … the news (1,000 kids crossing a street safely isn’t news. One who doesn’t, is;-/ Or that we don’t do any(!) good news stories (oh man, stats to show otherwise apparently will never change some minds on that one, because the tragedies/problems are so … sticky and heavy, while the good news often feels like a lighter-than-air will o’ the wisp… fluttering off in the breeze.)

I hope this all came across as more of an explanation than a defense. And wasn’t an eye-rolling exercise in “oh, who doesn’t know all THAT.” Because I really believe there are many who don’t know, and won’t automatically distrust the answers because they come from the Big Bad Media in Cahoots with Big Bad Government.

I sure hope/pray so.

And your question about what we do/don’t do and why is? (And the tone of your question will no doubt play a role in whether I answer and how. Civility meets civility and all that;-)

The Week in News: All Fired Up

Can I get myself into a pattern of regular blogging? Not sure, but will try.

I do enjoy, in its own way, wildfire season. Many people turn to our Website for the latest fire news, and I’ve been doing this long enough I know just what to ask and how to assemble it, fast.

One tricky thing is when a fire gets big enough that the local firefighters and Central Oregon Interagency Dispatch hand off to an incident management team. They do a great job, but the transition can be … messy.

I love what InciWeb brings to the table, for the bigger fires – a uniform presentation, and the ability to get photos, maps etc. I don’t think the government has thrown enough servers at it – it’s awfully slow most of the time – and I get to hear how the Forest Service, etc. folks wrestle with trying to make it work. (Heck, most in govt. aren’t allowed to access Facebook/Twitter, for fear of them wasting time yakking with friends. Those are getting to be crucial info platforms, folks – you really should find ways to make sure they can use it – for work, of course – but why not for other things during breaks?)

Anyway, I digress, as usual. We have a new group of ‘KTVZ freshmen’ (and women) you might say, learning the ropes. Today, Joe Burns got his first taste of reporting from the fire lines. He was nervous – who could blame him? – but I’m sure he did fine.

When the Rooster Rock Fire blew up near Plainview, we got TONS of great photos from amateurs and a few pros, and assembled a wonderful, ever-growing slide show. These fires now are in more remote areas, but still have caused damage. Hopefully not much more of that.

As a reporter, you get to know the people you deal with quite frequently, like the folks at Prineville fire dispatch. They help us out a lot, and I try to do the same, when I spot info they might not have, or some conflicting info, or holes in a news release (like I do withour local police agencies – hey, their main job is to catch bad guys and gals, not to write news releases!).

But the shorthand sometimes comes at a cost of less-than-totally-accurate writing. For example, if we say “24 thousand acres are burning on the Warm Springs Reservation,” it’s not really true. If a fire or group of fires reaches such a size, it usually means far less than that acreage burning at any one time. Add in the fact that it often will include unburned islands within the perimter – and land set ablaze by firefighters in burnouts, to rob the fire of fuel – and it’s as imprecise as anything that’s fast-changing and dealt with by fallible humans as best they can.

But the extra eyeballs that come to our Website – I hope we reward them with the best, most accurate roundup of info we have, as updated as can be, day or night. Makes for long hours, but also helps build a reputation that we’re the place to turn to learn the latest. And that can stand us in good stead when the news turns to ice on the roads, instead of fires in the canyons. After all, to get a lot of page views in summer, when smart, sane folks spend time away from their computers, is very satisfying – because when the chill returns (it’s 59 out now!), they’ll come back and hang out, we hope.

Speaking of hanging out, the embryonic High Desert Forum is still in soft-opening test mode. Hope you give it a try, as a place to talk that’s more focused than the scattershot message threads on articles that rise and fall, come and go off the home page.  It’s likely to change more in coming days, weeks and months as we seek out the right answer for such a need. Hopefully you’ll take the ride along with us, as we try to create a conversation spot – an online coffee shop/pub, if you will – that complements the Facebooks, Twitters, etc. I very much hope to keep the emphasis on the positive there – talking about great places, people, groups, companies etc. – and of course, the political debates/arguments too. The same rules as the Website will apply, with more tools to thumbs-up the great discussions and … we’ll see how it goes.