A month is a long time for local news media to keep a crime story alive, especially one with a single victim and few facts. Most crime stories last several days, and, if there is an arrest and a trial, coverage may go on a bit longer.
But add to the emotional mix the pressure of correspondents for national magazines, TV cable news and tabloid newspapers arriving in town to cover a crime, and watch out for the tsunami of hungry sharks.
If officials keep the facts to a minimum, get ready for the feeding frenzy in which rabid news people will eat their young and bite off their own arms for a fresh angle.
We saw this in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping when the Salt Lake City police tossed out the name of a man, apparently living out of his car, whom they wanted to interrogate. The man was not a suspect, police said, but cops across the country chased men in green sedans until they tracked the right one down in West Virginia, where he had hospitalized himself for a drug overdose.
Then, once he was in police custody (although he is not a suspect in the kidnapping), police tossed out another name — that of an ex-convict who had worked in the Smart home as a handyman. Police did not identify this man as a suspect either; they said he was at the top of the list of people who could be suspects.
Mmmmmmm, fresh meat for the pack. TV producers, magazine and newspaper reporters and photographers took off in search of a man no one had ever heard of. They talked to the man’s wife, his ex-wife, his father-in-law, his mother-in-law, his attorney, his trailer park neighbor with the missing front tooth, his car mechanic — and anyone else who would stand still long enough to be interviewed. They could not get to the handyman because police stuck him back in state prison on a parole violation.
Still, after all this time, there are only a few facts in this case:
1. Elizabeth Smart has been missing from her Salt Lake City home since early morning of June 5.
2. The exact time she went missing is unknown, although police estimate it was between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m.
3. There may have been an entry point through a window or an open garage door; police have been vague on this.
4. A whole bunch of people may or may not have traipsed through the crime scene before police were called or arrived. Police have given two different versions of this, one in which the neighbors were called before the police and one in which the police were called before the neighbors.
5. There was a witness to the alleged abduction, Elizabeth’s younger sister. Police say she did not see the man’s face, but she saw dark hair on the back of his hands and on his arms. He was wearing, according to the younger sister, tan pants, a Polo shirt, a tan jacket and a tan golf hat.
6. Elizabeth was wearing red silk pajamas and was allowed to put on her Ralph Lauren running shoes before she left.
That’s it. After more than four weeks.
But there are now four “non-suspects,” and with them lies a tragedy in the waiting, according to the attorney for Richard Jewell, the innocent man who was offered up by a number of news organizations as the culprit in the Atlanta Olympics bombing in 1996. Jewell was named as a suspect but never charged with a crime. During the weeks he was viewed as a suspect, however, Jewell was hounded by the press.
Lin Wood, who won several large out-of-court settlements from news organizations for Jewell, told The Hollywood Reporter last week, “The media has not altered from its historical conduct by being more than willing to come up with a guilty verdict before they have a charge against [a suspect].”
Television producers and newspaper editors are quick to explain they have done nothing wrong in interviewing the handyman’s wife, mechanic, ex-wife, neighbors, etc. They claim to be searching for the facts. Unfortunately, they are dealing with people who are less than sophisticated about the media. At one point, the non-suspect’s father-in-law appeared on television sitting in a chair in the yard outside his mobile home. He wore no shirt and continuously smoked a cigarette. It looked more like “God’s Little Acre” than “Father Knows Best.”
The ethics of such coverage are tricky. Elizabeth Smart’s family wants coverage to continue because they want Utahns to continue to search for their child. The media cannot continue to write stories using just the few facts they have, so there is a great temptation to bite at the scraps periodically thrown out by police. After all, this is a big story. The presence of so many people from the national media makes it so.
Reporters and editors start to squirm when they believe that police officials are using them to pressure people who have been identified but not officially tagged as suspects. Police also could offer up such people as a distraction to reporters hungry for stories. There is a scene at the end of the “Wizard of Oz” that may well depict the point to which this investigation has come. The booming voice of the Wizard directs the Cowardly Lion, the Tinman, the Scarecrow and Dorothy to “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain; behold the great and powerful Oz.”
Are reporters being asked to do the same? Who knows.
