The Ohio paper is no longer routinely identifying people accused of misdemeanors in its police reports, Managing Editor Tom Graser says in a new column. "In short," he writes, "it's a matter of fairness. Not everybody accused of a misdemeanor is guilty. Lots of people get accused of misdemeanors. Following each case to report on its conclusion is difficult at best and impossible at worst."
Starting today, he says, "we will take a step in the right direction by publishing court reports. These are conclusions. It will list names, final charges and sentences."
The paper had earlier disabled comments on its online police beat column, Graser says, because readers were constantly violating the Star's terms of service, in making unfounded accusations, name-calling and personal attacks.
Monday, August 23, 2010
8 comments:
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Weird. I thought the idea was to attract eyeballs, not yawns.
ReplyDeleteIt's reasonable. Consider the rise in lawsuits, the internet is not as nameless as some would believe. See link below. If I'm not mistaken, I think this is how the UK handles reporting crime reporting. Civilized. As newspapers become purveyors of defamation comments or slanderous remarks we will find ourselves at legal risk in the future unless we change how we allow people to write anything they wish or change the way we present the 'news'.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-10-internet-defamation-case_x.htm
I don't work there, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this policy. Not everyone who is accused of a felony is guilty, either. Hasn't the Star ever heard of any of the dozens, if not hundreds, of cases across the country where prisoners are released decades after original incarceration because of new evidence, often for alleged crimes such as rapes and murders?
ReplyDeleteI say it should be all or nothing. At some point, you have to assume that the majority of readers understand the concept of "innocent until proven guilty." And what's with the need to follow up on every single case? Since when is every little disturbing the peace or theft charge a story of its own? Trust me, if one of these fairly routine charges ends up needing to be a bigger story, the paper will hear about it, either from police sources or the arrestee.
Seems like there ought to be bigger fish to fry. Just my opinion.
There is no fairness in baseball.
ReplyDeleteMy paper stopped reporting most misdemeanor arrests a few years ago. Now it takes a lot more time to write the police log because of the amount of questioning often required to determine whether a charge is a felony or a misdemeanor or something else.
ReplyDeleteGraser is one of the great guys to work for/with in Gannett. That has nothing to do with this post - but enough people get ripped around here it's nice to note the kind and talents folks.
ReplyDeleteMarion isn't the first Gannett daily to tweak its crime reports in this way. For several years the Poughkeepsie Journal has had a policy to not ID suspects charged only with misdemeanors.
ReplyDeleteLest some think this is a newfangled policy, there are non-Gannett dailies in Washington state and Florida that do the same thing.
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