Young people who text at the speed of light have thrown a term — “TMI” — into the lexicon that describes a plight journalists face all the time: How much information is too much information (TMI)?
Reporters are trained to suck up details at news events like vacuum cleaners suck up the detritus of everyday life. When they get back to their computers, they sort through these details to make sure the most important ones are in the story.
In South Florida, police have arrested a teenager and charged him in a series of cat killings. In the Sun-Sentinel , a reporter describes in great detail how long the police were tailing this kid and the fact police have removed “cutting instruments” from the boy’s home. The paper, however, has avoided describing the methods the young man used in allegedly killing cats.
Why leave out this kind of information? To start, most subscribers are reading their newspapers over breakfast. Too much detail — especially in crime stories — can chill the appetites of even the strongest among us.
In a Salt Lake Tribune story headlined “Missing party-goer’s body found near Saltair,” reporter Erin Alberty wrote: “The cause of death is not clear, Hughes said. Because of the condition of his body, investigators could not immediately tell whether Schmidt had suffered any trauma.”
Readers have enough imagination to understand what “the condition of his body” means. Those readers who are endlessly fascinated by crime details have a wide selection of crime novels and television shows to sate their thirst.
So what is the line between adequate information and too much information? Terry Orme, Tribune managing editor for news and business, points out, “Our job is to answer the readers’ questions, to be clear and complete about what happened.
“At the same time, we must observe the credo of ‘do no harm,’ and that includes not divulging information that invades a victim’s privacy, that puts a witness in jeopardy — those sorts of things.”
But, he admits, “The line moves, and these issues have to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. You can have general rules, but there are going to be times when you break those rules.
“You have to ask these questions: Are we putting someone in harm’s way in our reporting? Is the detail in a crime story integral to telling the story, or is it gratuitous? Does a detail really add to the story?
“You have to ask: Are we serving our readers by keeping a detail out of a story? Don’t they deserve to know this? There are no easy answers, just very hard judgment calls.”
Amen, Terry.
Elizabeth Neff, news editor on the Justice Desk, gets plenty of practice in drawing the line:
“Writing crime stories is always a balancing act. On one hand, we must give readers information essential to understanding the facts and impact of an event. But we must also bear in mind that there are some details that we may know but are simply not needed to effectively communicate what happened. One example: It’s sufficient to say a woman was sexually assaulted, although we may have a greater level of detail about the exact act or acts committed by her attacker.”
