It’s all too easy for a newspaper to rile its readers’ sensibilities, as the following instance illustrates.
A Page One photo Nov. 16 showing an African-American police officer peering out a window at a Cedarbrook murder scene brought dozens of complaints from readers who felt The Inquirer was making “a deliberate attempt to denigrate black people,” as one put it.
John Costello’s photo was a compelling news shot of the policeman at a second-floor window at the home where Hope Thomas was murdered. A headline declared “Nightmare in Cedarbrook,” while the caption read: “A masked gunman left a woman dead and her young daughter tied up and traumatized inside this Cedarbrook house late Tuesday. Yesterday, a police officer at the scene peered from a second-floor window. The girl managed to escape and notify her grandmother. The gunman was at large.”
The initial impression for many readers was that the man in the photo was the killer who was about to be arrested. Wrong.
The display was published in all editions except in the 65,000-copy late Sports Final, when it was replaced by a picture of the Christmas light show at Hecht’s Center City department store.
Dozens of readers were outraged. “How could you put such a picture in the paper, unfairly stereotyping African Americans and playing to the fears of white people?” a woman shouted. “That’s irresponsibility of the highest order,” said Shelley Yanoff, executive director of Philadelphians for Children and Youth.
A Cedarbrook woman said: “I saw that picture — and particularly the headline — and I understood instantly why African Americans feel they don’t get a fair shake. This is incredibly irresponsible and shows a horrible lack of sensitivity.”
A Camden County woman added: “The picture alone is bad enough. You can barely see the badge and you don’t know the man is a policeman until you read the caption — and not even until the second line of it. But then that headline, obviously intended to frighten people, made it even worse.”
The readers are right that it was a serious error. But it was not deliberate and was corrected as soon as staffers saw it in print. Steve Glynn, night news editor, felt the photo was movingly evocative of the murder scene and was the best news photo of the day. And the original print clearly showed the policeman’s uniform — and his badge.
But the picture was cropped too tightly resulting in the badge barely showing; the uniform was blurred into obscurity. Still, the photo would have been fine had it not been for the headline and caption which began, “A masked gunman…”
Because the paper’s presses are 15 miles away in Upper Merion Township, a printed copy did not reach the newsroom until shortly after 1 a.m. When staffers saw the full display, they immediately substituted the photo for the next edition — unfortunately the last and smallest.
From the outset, the photo’s inherent power was recognized and in a pre-publication meeting, photo and layout editors discussed how they would handle it. Because the badge was easily identifiable, it was felt the photo should be used, although at that point neither the caption nor headline had been written.
“The photo was good,” Glynn said. “But our handling of it was not.”
In ensuing days, the paper was criticized for “discriminating” news coverage by publishing three major stories (and two briefs) about the murder of a young white woman, Kimberly Ernest, while she was jogging in Center City, but only two stories, one a short, on Hope Thomas’ murder.
“What’s the matter with you people?” a reader asked. “Don’t you think Ms. Thomas’ death is worth anything? Is it because she’s black?”
On Nov. 22, the Daily News published a photo and story on Hope Thomas’ funeral. The Inquirer had nothing, but later covered a memorial service with a Page One photo and a story on the front of City & Region.
I think the lesson is that The Inquirer must give more thought and be more sensitive to coverage that some readers could consider biased.
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Readers also questioned the paper’s judgment of another Page One photo — the Nov. 22 picture showing Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, who was wounded in 1993 by a hit man hired by John Stanfa, giving a donation to the homeless. In the background was a television newscast with newly convicted Stanfa in the center of the picture.
“These are Mafia people,” a South Philadelphia man exclaimed. “Why do you put their picture on the front page when all they do is kill and rob people?” Another caller said The Inquirer was “wrong to try to pretend these people are the salt of the earth. They’re just bums.”
I disagree, for the photo’s strong irony tells the whole story in a glance. Far from glorifying the Mafia, it vividly showed the transparency of what we have to recognize as a clever — but failed — public relations gambit. That’s what makes it a great picture.
