Media Nation links to the New Haven Independent’s coverage of the Annie Le murder, noting that the news site refrained from naming the suspect, Raymond Clark, until he had been formally charged. The Independent links back to Media Nation’s commentary on said decision and asks its readers to comment.
Tag: ethics
Torturing a Cheney photo
Well-known photojournalist David Hume Kennerly is ripping mad at Newsweek for cropping his photo of Dick Cheney and his family to make it look like the former vice president is picking over the remains of a small animal. (Be sure to click through so that you can see the before and after pictures.)
Appropriately enough (make that inappropriately enough), the photo was used to illustrate something Cheney had said about torture, of which he’s all in favor.
Noting that Newsweek had taken a picture of a warm family scene and cropped it so that it looked like an animal sacrifice, with Cheney as the knife-wielding priest, Kennerly writes:
This radical alteration is photo fakery. Newsweek’s choice to run my picture as a political cartoon not only embarrassed and humiliated me and ridiculed the subject of the picture, but it ultimately denigrated my profession.
Kennerly’s right on target, as the lame response from a Newsweek spokesman makes clear. The photo was tortured into something that it was not. As a result, it’s not journalism, either.
Murder suspect charged — and named
Police in Connecticut this morning finally charged Raymond Clark in connection with the murder of Yale University student Annie Le. And with that, the New Haven Independent — which had refused to identify Clark when he was merely a “person of interest” — has named him and posted a photo.
Paul Bass on (not) naming names
After I posted an item earlier today on the New Haven Independent’s decision not to identify Raymond Clark, the “person of interest” in the murder of Yale University student Annie Le, I invited editor Paul Bass to comment on his decision.
Bass replied by e-mail, telling me that “you’re so right — it’s futile. But we wanted to be consistent.” He added that “we originally broke the story about this suspect. The national media said a student was the suspect. We reported that, no, it was a lab tech, and we gave details that wouldn’t lead the public to be able to find him. We had the name pretty early, and some good info, but decided to go with the basic story.”
In a follow-up e-mail, Bass explained, “We do have quite a strong policy about withholding names. In our routine police stories, we rarely name people (non-public figures) arrested unless there’s a compelling reason, or we’ve gotten their side. We might be wrong, for sure. Lotta back and forth. Maybe a futile high horse thing. Don’t know.”
Ethics, competition and a high-profile murder
A 24-year-old resident of Middletown, Conn., has been detained and identified as a “person of interest” in the murder of Yale University student Annie Le.
Most news outlets, including the New Haven Register and the New York Times, have identified the man as Raymond Clark, a Yale lab technician. Each includes a photo of him in police custody. Yet the New Haven Independent, a non-profit news site, has declined to name him. In a story posted late Monday afternoon, editor Paul Bass wrote:
As of Monday afternoon, police had no suspects in custody in the investigation of graduate student Annie Le’s grisly death, [New Haven Police] Chief James Lewis said.
He told the Independent that his cops have been busy interviewing “and reinterviewing” “lots of people.” The department will not reveal the names of interviewees or “persons of interest,” according to Lewis.
“We don’t want to destroy people’s reputations,” Lewis said.
But Lewis reversed himself once Clark was taken into custody. The New Haven Police Department named Clark in a press release shortly after Clark had been removed from his Middletown apartment. Following Lewis’ news conference Tuesday night, the Independent’s managing editor, Melissa Bailey, wrote:
“We’ve known where he was at all along,” Police Chief James Lewis said at a press conference late Tuesday night at police headquarters. He spoke before a throng of video cameras.
Police named the target of the search, calling him a “person of interest.”
In an accompanying video Bailey shot of Lewis speaking to the media, Clark’s name does not pass from the chief’s lips. In a follow-up posted shortly before midnight, Bailey added: “A prime suspect is a 24-year-old Yale lab tech who until this past week worked at 10 Amistad St. among other locations. His identity was confirmed by officials close to the probe. The Independent is withholding his name.”
There’s certainly a strong case to be made for not naming Clark. Unless he is charged, he is not a suspect in Le’s murder. The possibility exists that an innocent person will have had his reputation permanently smeared.
But though the Independent’s — well, independence — is admirable, it’s also futile. (Which is why I named Clark.) Still, by taking a principled stand, Bass may well earn the respect of his readers. Take, for instance, this comment to the Independent, at the bottom of this story, from “ASDF,” posted Tuesday evening:
This better be the person who did it, because his name is being published at other sites. Thank you for the good sense to not publish his name at this time — ever since the NHPD took the case over, the leaks have been coming out at a pretty fast pace.
I really don’t understand what there is to gain by releasing his name — if you don’t have enough evidence to arrest him, then you don’t have enough evidence to smear him in the media.
Finally, I wonder why Chief Lewis folded as quickly as he did. In less than a day, he went from vowing not to name anyone who hadn’t been charged with the murder to blasting out Clark’s name in a press release.
Maybe he believed his hand had been forced, since Clark’s name was circulating anyway. Maybe he just couldn’t resist. But it strikes me that his first instinct was the one he should have followed.
More: Bass responds.
Rebuilding trust in the media
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at a new Pew survey that shows media credibility is at an all-time low — and consider a few steps that news organizations might take to counteract public distrust.
Commenting on comments with Keller
WBZ-TV (Channel 4) political analyst Jon Keller will be interviewing Doug Bailey and me about Bailey’s column in today’s Boston Globe, in which he argues that newspaper comments are worthless. (They are if you’re going to do them the way the Globe and the Boston Herald do them. But we’ll talk.)
The segment should pop up on the 11 p.m. news.
And by the way, has anyone yet figured out the identity of the anonymous blogger whom Bailey attacked?
Thursday update: Here’s the link to Keller’s story.
An anonymous straw man
Doug Bailey want you to know there’s a local blog out there that’s not as reliable as maybe it should be. (Imagine that.) But he doesn’t want you to know what the blog is. Bailey, a former Boston Globe staffer-turned-media consultant, writes on the Globe’s op-ed page:
I recently contacted a blog that has apparently gained a reputation as an “authoritative source” on local news to point out an outrageously inaccurate — and easily verifiable — item posted on the site, attributed to one of its many “insiders.” The editor of the site conceded to me his “inside” information had actually come from an anonymous posting he saw on a newspaper website. If this wasn’t outrageous enough, this site has developed a following among traditional media reporters who apparently believe this blogger is wired and who regularly republish his missives unaware that his “exclusive” sources come from anonymous comments on their own websites. The identities of the “insiders” are unknown even to the original blogger.
Without the name of the blog and its author, and a chance for him to respond, the value of Bailey’s anecdote is approximately zero. Let’s have it, Doug. And let’s see the Globe give his target an opportunity to defend himself.
The Washington Post’s own pay-for-play scandal
In my latest for the Guardian, I examine why the pay-for-play scandal at the Washington Post — off-the-record access to Post editors and reporters at publisher Katharine Weymouth’s home for $25,000 a pop — defied early efforts to contain it.
On the one hand, it’s good to know that we’re still capable of being appalled. On the other hand, was this really all that different from what happens every day at the nexus of power, media and money?
Slideshow for Dowd plagiarism discussion
Maureen Dowd and Plagiarism
View more documents from Dan Kennedy.
Later this afternoon I’ll be leading a discussion of the Maureen Dowd plagiarism story in Steve Burgard’s graduate ethics class at Northeastern. Here’s the slideshow I’ll be using.