I spent four very interesting hours Saturday with all three Central Oregon district attorneys, defense lawyers, public defenders, police, several of us media types – all talking off the record.
But it’s VERY ironic that I write up some of the themes of that talk after probably the most overt, posted lawsuit threat in our many months of online article comment postings.
‘Building a Culture of Dialogue’ was the topic of the gathering, arranged by the Oregon Bar Press Broadcasters Council.
Folks gave up a big part of their Saturday for a free bag lunch and a chance to not just talk, but listen to each other as we discussed a few ‘ripped from the headlines’ scenarios that have dealt with the issue of a free press and how that role can cause issues for those seeking to assure a fair trial.
The justice system has changed little over the decades, as technological and cultural shifts have changed, greatly, what a prospective juror might hear or read, and from who or where. Imagine if bloggers, for example, or anonymous article postings existed back when our justice system was created. It’s not a perfect system, but how can it evolve and cope with those issues?
That wasn’t the topic of Saturday’s session, really. But things like that did come up – imagine, for example, a DA sending an e-mail declining to confirm or deny a juicy rumor, but inadvertently – one must presume inadvertently – including some damning information below the e-mail, or in an attachment.
Can the reporter then report that information? Use it to ask questions/gather more info? Confront the DA, threaten to use it unless he/she provides some on-the-record info on an ongoing investigation?
Reporters have gone to jail for refusing to disclose their sources. Local media don’t print info from anonymous sources, unless they can get an on-the-record corrobration.
I’ve learned to live with and have a strong defense against the whole notion that the media only reports things “because it sells papers” (or TV commercials). I know we report what is considered news, and yes, we have to make a profit to survive.
But I am just as uneasy as many a defense lawyer about how days, weeks, months, sometimes even years of reports about a heinous crime can make their job incredibly difficult, even with all the “alleged” and “innocent until proven guilty” provisos that we include, for our own legal protection as much as anything else.
Finding actual justice after the “court of public opinion” has made up its collective mind is only getting harder in an age when Website can give you a person’s criminal history in an instant, and where increasingly, opinions are shared as thinly-veiled, so-called “facts.”
Small town or large, reporters and editors are often friends, of a sort, with their sources, with people who make news, and with people in the justice system. Wearing the right hat at the right time, and knowing how to do one’s job and not rupture those relationships is one of the struggles reporters and editors face all the time. I’ve said before, “I don’t mind making an official mad for the right reason” is a glib quip that tries to put a light face on it.
But of course, when a source tells us something juicy, we have to “consider the source,” literally – how do they stand to gain, if the tip is true and the info comes to light?
We will never convince some – make that many – people that we strive to get the facts right and that we really wouldn’t run over our own grandmother for a juicy story. One thing I try to do in our article-comment system is explain – sure, defend, too, but mainly explain – how we human-being reporters and photographers and our bosses do what we do, and why.
Because if news is a conversation, we all have to listen as much as we talk. It’s that easy – and that hard.
Leave it to Barney 