The violent death of an innocent child. The kind of event that mesmerizes a community. A sobering moment that draws people together. In horror. In fear. In shared pain.
A newspaper, all the media, in fact, take on a special role at these times. We satisfy the public’s heightened awareness, citizens’ need to know, their passion for justice, their desire to console a grieving family.
That is why The Arizona Republic jumped on the story. “The homicide of a child is such a grotesque aberration from the way things should be, a newspaper has a responsibility to expose it for what it is,” observed Tom Zoellner, the reporter who covered the story. The truth. The detail. The horror.
It was that sense of truth, that responsibility, which demanded Zoellner reveal in a May 31 story that the child had been the victim of a sexual assault and strangled.
“We couldn’t sit on this. There was a sexual predator out on the streets. The residents of the neighborhood needed to know this,” Zoellner said.
His spare, facts-only language conveyed the message. “The 8-year-old girl suffered severe sexual trauma before she was dumped in a southwest Phoenix canal,” he wrote. No gory detail. No embellishment. There was no need.
Not everyone, of course, agreed with the decision to reveal the nature of Elizabeth Byrd’s death.
Reader James Cruse, in an e-mail, said it was “inexcusable” to reveal the cause of death. “It hurt a lot of people and accomplished nothing positive,” he said.
Marilyn LaBash called it “tasteless.”
Others worry that media reports will hamper the police.
“There is a need for some holding back,” Zoellner conceded. Investigators keep secret such details that only the perpetrators and the police would know. This strategy can both weed out false confessions and trap the killers.
But once Zoellner discovered that Elizabeth was indeed a sexual-assault victim – and had it confirmed by a law enforcement official – editors agreed the information had to be published.
“We went with two salient facts, the bare-bones elements that she was strangled and a victim of a violent sexual assault,” Zoellner said. “That said everything.” No gory detail. No embellishment.
The reporter contacted the girl’s family and alerted them prior to publication. Family members were not surprised by the news and were grateful for the warning.
Zoellner’s story was confirmed when sheriff’s investigators released more facts after the arrest of Steven Ray Newell, a transient well known in the neighborhood and to the victim’s family.
A senseless death. A community mourns. A tragic story. Vigorously reported. Exhaustively covered. Appropriately written.
Sadly, it won’t be the last time.
