The Globe, like any large paper, wields tremendous power, and readers expect it to exercise great care — sometimes even restraint — when reporting on people who are vulnerable. In three recent cases, some readers said, the Globe fell short.
Did the story on teen abstinence really have to identify by name a sexually active 15-year-old girl? Did the Globe go overboard with the story on the now-discredited tip about six alleged terrorists with a “dirty bomb?” Finally, was it appropriate to run the column on how a former political rising star has become “practically a street person?”
Here’s what readers thought, and how the relevant writer or editor responded. While I may not agree with every reader on every point, together they outlined the kind of sensitivities that should govern a paper’s daily work.
Sex and an ID
At issue: A Jan. 3 feature on a sex abstinence class at Lynn English High School, which quoted by name a 15-year-old who regretted having sex.
Complaint: “The point could have just as easily been made without naming her and making very public something that for her own good should have been kept private,” e-mailed reader Jennifer Balog. “It does not matter if she willingly gave her name . . . it is the responsibility of adults, especially those in positions of power, to protect others when they may not realize that they need to be protected. There is a reason that the names of juveniles are often kept private . . . the same reasoning should have applied here.”
Response, from City Editor Foon Rhee: “The reader raises a sensitive issue, one that reporters and editors do not take lightly. It’s something of a balancing act. In some situations, special care needs to be taken with juveniles. But in general, we name the people that we quote. That was the decision in this case, in which the teenager volunteered to talk to a reporter and her account was briefly mentioned, near the end of the story.”
Terrorists who weren’t
At issue: The Jan. 20 account of the manhunt for six people who, according to a later-discredited tipster, planned to detonate a “dirty bomb” in Boston. Mug shots of four suspects, all Chinese, ran with the story across the top of the front page. (Photos of the other two suspects, neither Chinese, were not available.) The sub-headline read: “Though skeptical, FBI scours region.”
Complaint: The story needed more skepticism and less emphasis on the suspects’ Chinese identity, said Yoon Sun Lee, associate English professor at Wellesley College. “What crossed the line was publishing the photos; it assumes their criminality. The story of course had to be reported, but not with a banner headline on the front page, and not with photos. You might have well just printed WANTED across their faces.” She added in a later e-mail: “I was sorry to have to bring it in to show my American Studies class this morning as an example of how so little has changed, 60 years after the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II.”
As the threat was discredited (“FBI finds terror threat was fabricated” was atop the Jan. 26 front page) the emphasis on race diminished, she said, and by last week “the group was referred to as ‘six people’ . . . Too bad they weren’t referred to in that way initially.”
Response, by Executive Editor Helen Donovan: “We played the story prominently on page one because it was a dramatic tip with Boston as the focal point, and because agencies from the FBI to the MBTA said they were taking it seriously. We also noted prominently, in the third paragraph, that none of the claims had been corroborated. Without our being able to independently evaluate the plausibility of the tip that evening, we were likely to overplay or underplay the story, depending on what eventually emerged . . . I can appreciate the reaction of readers who thought the mug shots were too prominent — I had second thoughts myself about their size, the next morning. But it’s hard to see the rationale for not including the photos and identities of those being sought.”
Life on the margins
At issue: Alex Beam’s Jan. 25 Living section column on a one-time political star who, he reports, is now without a regular job, probably homeless, and a “paranoid” with real enemies.
Complaint: The column struck reader Scott Offen as “rather shabby treatment of someone who may well be unable to control much of his behavior . . . The attempt at humor, irony, whatever, sounds really sour,” Offen wrote. “This is well below the Globe’s standards of fairness.”
Response, from Beam: “I am not in the business of holding forth on people’s mental health; perhaps Mr. Offen is. I don’t recall an ‘attempt at humor’ in the article, but that’s certainly in the eye of the reader, not the writer.” Beam said the former politico freely admitted that he had fallen on hard times, adding, “His triumphs and agonies were set out fairly, and in context.” That, of course, is also in the eye of the beholder.
