Years ago, I worked at the now-defunct Fort Lauderdale News for now-deceased Editor Milt Kelly, a newsman’s newsman. Quick-witted and by turns funny and serious, Kelly perked up when the alert bells went off on the old-style teletype wire machines. No matter how high Kelly went on the food chain, everyone knew to get out of his way when the bells went off, because by-standers could be trampled as Kelly headed for the wire machines.
A tough journalist with that proverbial heart of precious metal, Kelly led by example. And his newsroom would have marched into you-know-where behind him.
But when he had to deal with the business side of the newspaper, he often was flummoxed. One afternoon he came
back from a meeting on the top floor muttering about the newsroom being “a non-revenue producing department.” This was the epithet the bean-counters tossed at Kelly when he wanted a bump in his budget.
Listening to the muffled swear words Kelly was spitting out in frustration, I pointed out a way that the news department could become revenue-producing: “We could charge $100,000 to put a story in the paper and $250,000 to keep one out.”
Of course he would never do such a thing, but the statement makes a point. To have any credibility, a newspaper must be willing to evaluate its news decisions on ethical grounds.
A woman called on Tuesday complaining about a story by police reporter Kevin Cantera about the “BudBrawl” during
the Winter Olympics when Salt Lake City police faced a small bunch of hooligans among a crowd of thousands gathered on the 300 South block of Main Street. Police ordered the crowd to disperse and when they did not, officers employed rubber bullets and other “nonlethal” rounds to enforce their command. (Note to people who were not alive in the 1960s and 1970s: When police show up in riot gear and start moving toward you with riot shields, it’s time to follow directions.)
The woman who called me was the mother — the concerned and protective type — of one of the 14 men and two boys who were arrested at the melee. She wanted to know if a newspaper had the right to print a story about a person without that person’s consent. Yes, a newspaper can print an account of an incident based upon police reports and court proceedings without comment or permission from a person named in the account. And, if the report is accurate, the paper is protected from lawsuits based on any erroneous information in the reports.
At The Tribune, reporters make every effort to contact people they are going to write about. This is common practice at almost every daily paper in the nation.
In this instance, Cantera called the man and left a message for him to call back. His mother said the young man was out of town at the time. She told me her son “was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
But her son pleaded guilty to charges of attempted assault on a police officer. (A word to the wise: If you touch a police officer who is trying to arrest you, you legally are attempting to assault him.) At the time of the incident, his name did not appear in The Tribune, because the newspaper usually does not name suspects until they have been charged formally with a crime. The first story that appeared subsequent to the initial coverage was Cantera’s piece in Monday’s edition. It looked at what happened as a result of the arrests and named only those people who were convicted of more serious offenses.
Her son was among them. “I hope this does not ruin his life,” the mother told me.
Since he is not a career criminal, I doubt it will.
But her last question was the most troubling: “If I had returned the call to Mr. Cantera for my son and begged him not
to use his name, would he have left my son’s name out?”
Lacking an extraordinary reason — which she did not offer — the answer is no.
For a newspaper to have credibility, it must make independent, sometimes difficult, decisions. Some of those decisions involve naming people who would rather not be named. Naming the woman’s son, along with several other defendants, allowed the reporter to discuss the disposition of the most serious cases. In general, however, those charged with or convicted of misdemeanors are not named in The Tribune.
Incidentally, the woman’s son — in a plea agreement with the prosecutor — got a light sentence: probation, anger
management class and a small fine; his record will be expunged if he successfully completes his probation.
He is one lucky young man.
