As the coverage of the police-involved shooting unfurled, the familiar but disturbing calls and e-mails rolled in.
How come The Oregonian is so anti-police? Why does the newspaper make the victim of a shooting a victim again? Why is the newspaper aligned with the establishment, mostly white cops? Why does the newspaper cater to the black community?
The questions about the shooting of James Jahar Perez were reminiscent of the ones raised during coverage of the shooting of Kendra James 10 months ago. The divisions in the community reflected by the calls, plus their vitriol, angered and saddened me. But their familiarity from past shootings also reminded me of how little understood the newspaper’s role is in the community crisis of a police-involved shooting, despite the important part it must play.
A democracy that relies on gun-carrying police officers to enforce the laws cannot function unless the public can trust those officers and the government they represent. But an aggressive press is needed to help the public gain or regain trust in the government and its officers.
“I can’t imagine a more important role for us,” says Editor Sandy Rowe.
That role demands that the newspaper practice its best journalism as aggressively as possible. The coverage should be fair, accurate and complete, and readers should be quick to point out when the newspaper fails on those counts.
That role also frames my response to the questions most commonly raised by readers in the course of the coverage since the March 28 shooting. Lacking information, readers and the public understandably rely on their biases and experiences to make assumptions and assign motives, many of which were reflected in questions:
Why is there so much coverage of this incident?
The release of information from the Police Bureau has been limited so far — and yet the demand from the public for answers has been loud. Tom Maurer, leader of the crime team, says the newspaper needs to fill that vacuum of information with what it knows as quickly as it can do so responsibly. That requires the newspaper to mount its own, independent investigation.
The newspaper has written almost 20 substantial stories about the shooting and now has devoted several reporters to the story. Rather than too extensive, however, you could argue that the coverage has not been deep enough, soon enough, given the incident’s importance. For example, a well-developed story last week on witnesses came 10 days after the shooting.
Why are Perez’s police record and the fact that he had cocaine in his system relevant? Doesn’t reporting that simply victimize him again?
When a shooting occurs, readers want to know why it occurred, and they also want to know who was involved. A victim’s criminal record is critical because it shows that he or she has had past stops or encounters with police. But the records should not be the sole reflection of the victim, even though with computer technology the record is often easier to learn than other information about a person.
The cocaine might have influenced how Perez reacted to the stop, according to medical experts. Given that, editors think that readers should know about it; the newspaper should err on the side of full disclosure of the facts it knows. “Readers are very intelligent,” says Kathleen Glanville, the assistant crime team leader who is helping to oversee coverage. “Readers dislike thinking that we are going to withhold information.”
Why is the background of the police officer relevant?
In seeking to answer the question of why the shooting occurred, an obvious area of inquiry is the officer’s background, experience and training. Those can show how he has handled similar situations in the past and how he has used his gun.
Why does the life of the victim merit front-page display when other people who have contributed more to the community die each day?
The stories on Perez try to address the reader question of who was shot by police. Journalists should never stop valuing every life; with all the discussion swirling, the fact that a life was lost should not be forgotten in the midst of covering a major story.
Why does this police-involved shooting merit more coverage than two others since the James shooting?
With the shootings of James and Perez, both victims were unarmed and the threat to officers or others was less in question. In the two other shootings, one man was armed with a knife and threatening his girlfriend and the other had driven his car at officers. One of those victims was Latino and one was white. Given the historical relationship between Portland police and the African American community, the Perez and James shootings raise more questions and concerns, and demand more answers from the newspaper.
Why does race matter in the coverage?
The shooting understandably sparks fears and criticism in the African American community, not only because two unarmed African Americans have been killed by Portland police in 10 months. The reaction also stems from the context of a history of bad relations between African Americans and Portland police. It also comes in the context of a study, albeit a limited one, indicating African Americans are disproportionately the target of stops by Portland police.
Keith Woods, an instructor at the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for working journalists, who writes and lectures on race coverage, argues that the newspaper needs to confront the issue of race head-on once it’s been raised by the community. That is critical, he says, both in fairness to the officer and in addressing the major concern of many in the community, not only African Americans.
Police are telling few details so far, and that demands the newspaper pursue the question of race. At a minimum, it requires sharing the context and history driving the fears of the community — which has been missing from a few stories. Lacking information, readers will assume motives on the part of the police, the community and the newspaper.
In reviewing the coverage, I was struck by the fact that in at least the first 12 days of coverage, the race of the police officer was not noted in news columns. Maurer and other editors argue that the issue in the shooting involves the police treatment of African Americans, not the race of an individual officer. But it seems that if the newspaper is fully committed to sharing as much information with readers as possible, it should report that fact as well; if the race of the victim is relevant, so, too, is the race of the officer.
The value and importance of the newspaper’s independently pursuing its own investigation are reflected in the story last week on witnesses to the shooting, points out Stephen Engelberg, the managing editor for enterprise who has overseen much of the coverage. The newspaper found an eyewitness whom police had not found yet.
Without him, readers would not have had a bit more light shed on the answer to perhaps their most important questions: What happened, and why did it happen?
