How well has The Press-Enterprise been handling the volatile story about Riverside police killing a 19-year-old black woman in her locked car?
It is a national-size story fraught with problems for the local newspaper. It involves strong feelings about police and about minorities. More important, it is a serious conflict, with words like “tinderbox” being voiced — justifiably or for self-serving purposes.
The responsibility of The Press-Enterprise is easy to state: It must tell the public all it can find out about the shooting, and as soon as possible, while opinions and passions are forming. To do this, the paper must sift rumors, some possibly launched with malice aforethought, from supportable material. And the paper must write the story and display it in a responsible manner.
That does not mean hiding the story or downplaying its importance. It does mean giving the almost-everyday developments proper perspective.
We have not received a lot of complaints about the paper’s handling of the story about Tyisha Miller. One came from Roger Luebs, a Riverside County deputy district attorney and vice president of the Riverside Unified School Board. He (along with some in our office) complained that a headline reporting the young woman’s blood-alcohol level said toxicological tests showed she was “drunk.”
He correctly pointed out that the word was judgmental and subjective; that the blood-level reading could only be compared to the state law that sets a limit on blood-alcohol levels while driving.
The story on which the headline was based quoted Vina Spiehler, a forensic toxicology expert, describing intoxication-like symptons that someone with that level “might” demonstrate. But Spiehler also was careful to say her conclusions did not apply specifically to Ms. Miller.
Furthermore, in the story text, the paper erroneously said that the blood alcohol reading was above the “intoxication limit in California.” There is no such general limit. The story meant to refer just to the driving limit.
These serious and factual errors in the story have been corrected, albeit, belatedly. The headline, using the word “drunk” which the story did not, should also have been corrected, but it was not.
Another questionable headline, on Dec. 30, said, “Police defend officers’ actions” when in fact police were quoted simply describing what happened (although one defended their not waiting for a key to arrive before breaking the car window).
A Readers’ Open Forum letter to the editor from Joe Cruz of Romoland that ran Jan. 6 objected to the identification of the ethnicity of the officers involved. Concern over racial bias as a factor in the shooting already had been raised, however, so the ethnicity of the police officers was germane.
Cruz also felt the paper had “sensationalized” the story. But the editors were quite sensitive to another potential problem, the feeling by some police that The Press-Enterprise is anti-cop. Much of that kind of conclusion from some officers, of course, is the result of the prism through which police look at stories involving themselves.
That problem is not limited to police. Editor and Publisher Marcia McQuern pointed out that she was also concerned that minorities might criticize coverage in the belief that the paper is part of the city establishment.
Where the paper must be careful is not to be anti-cop or pro-cop, or pro-establishment or anti-establishment, in its news coverage. In reporting on controversial incidents, it must be fair, but it also must be thorough and not depend on just the information provided by official police and establishment pronouncements.
With those concerns in mind, the paper held for several days the identities of officers involved in the shooting while seeking to get more information on the men to put their role in context. A reporter had learned the identities from unnamed sources. Police Chief Jerry Carroll was informed, and instead of providing background, he asked Executive Editor George Rodrigue and McQuern not to run the names.
Carroll said there had been a death threat. Such threats are not uncommon, but the chief did not give any evidence that the threat was credible, McQuern said. He did agree that he had the resources to protect the officers.
Why would the paper publish the names? The identities and backgrounds of the officers were key parts of the story that the public was trying to understand. It also is clear from experience that when information is made public, more information can come in from the public, illuminating events. It is also clear that the names were going to be made public sooner or later in court, and that the names already were known to a large group of people. In a way, only the public was being kept in the dark.
The newspaper also faced difficulties in getting other information that may have been passed on to some community minority leaders by Carroll in meetings closed to the press — a technique he has used in at least one previous case involving what proved to be police misconduct.
There is nothing wrong with the chief talking to such leaders, but shutting the press out from learning what went on firsthand shuts the public out of getting a firsthand report on who said what, the chief’s response and the tone of the meeting.
It is the press that reaches the mass of citizens. The community leaders attending have a more limited audience (one, for instance, estimated she was able to advise about 100 people about exchanges with the chief; another said he reached “hundreds”).
They also leave no permanent record to review.
Kimberly Thomas, program co-ordinator for People Reaching Out, a group in Riverside’s Eastside that works with youth, attended the first closed meeting. She said the chief felt the media had quoted him out of context and that he had been misconstrued. The Rev. L.E. Campbell of the Park Avenue Missionary Baptist Church said the chief showed no animosity toward the press.
In closing the meetings, Carroll said in an interview, he was not concerned about an inaccurate report in the press. He was more concerned about opening a dialogue with community leaders in a way that they would not feel inhibited by presence of the press.
“If the media was there, it would influence the meeting,” he said. Some people might posture for the media to push their agenda, he added.
The chief also closed off another source of information — transcripts of the tape recordings of the 911 call summoning help for Miller and of the police radio traffic responding to the call. He said that he did not want to release information piecemeal because, he contended, opinions get formed in an emotional way with fragmentary evidence.
So reporters trying to pull together a timely story describing how the incident came about had to rely on unnamed sources and persons people outside the police department. They did have, of course, the fragmentary information that police had released on the day of the shooting and some selected details in subsequent days.
In its coverage of such a major story, The Press-Enterprise also sought to examine other issues raised in the shooting — the practices and experiences of civilian review boards, for instance, or how the national media were dealing with the story. And it plans other stories examining aspects of the case in a broader context.
Between the Dec. 29 paper, which first carried news of the shooting, and the Jan. 15 paper, when this column was completed, the paper has published 25 stories, two corrections, several letters to the editor and three editorials about the shooting.
More — probably much more — is still to come. Many people, me included, are seriously concerned as a result of what we have heard, and fail to see the value of a moratorium on information until the police department is ready to release its complete investigation.
And so the reporters will dig.
Readers are mature enough to know when more information is needed before final conclusions are reached and they know how to change their views when more information comes along.
