A Dilemma for a Police Reporter
So you're covering the police beat at your local paper when you learn the cops are investigating the mayor for allegedly stealing money from the town treasury. You want to run the story, but the police chief asks you to wait; running the story now, he says, could jeopardize the cops' probe of the greedy mayor.
What do you do?
The Chicago Tribune faced such a dilemma recently when it was investigating Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Federal prosecutors who were also investigating the governor asked the Tribune to delay publishing some stories until key parts of their investigation could be carried out. The Tribune agreed to delay publication in some cases, but not in others.
A Frequent Request
Kelly McBride, media ethicist at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. and a former police reporter, says such requests come up all the time on the police beat.
"Law enforcement often makes these kinds of requests to journalists, but having been a cop reporter I know it's never as black and white as it seems," McBride says. "Most of the time reporters are reluctant to comply with such requests because law enforcement often can't clearly demonstrate that publication will harm their investigations."
"But when police can demonstrate that there is a clear and irreparable harm to be done by publishing certain information, on those rare occasions reporters and editors look for alternatives," she adds.
Why Not Cooperate With Law Enforcement?
A layman might ask: Why shouldn't journalists cooperate with police in every instance?
"Because journalists have a different set of loyalties and a different set of outcomes from law enforcement," McBride says. "And in most cases the outcomes are equally good for society. The journalist serves her audience by telling the truth about what is going on, and law enforcement serves its goal, which is justice and the legal process."
Key Questions To Ask
McBride says reporters faced with such requests should ask law enforcement officials several key questions:
- How exactly would publishing the story compromise their investigation?
- How much time do they need to continue their investigation before the story can be published?
McBride also outlines questions reporters should ask themselves when considering such dilemmas:
- What is my journalistic purpose?
- What are my alternatives?
- What are our company policies?
- How do I maximize my goal of truth-telling and minimize any damage?
- Do I have enough information?
- What other information do I need to make this decision?
- How do I explain myself to the public?
McBride says there are situations when reporters clearly should cooperate with law enforcement.
"I think if it was imminent that publishing a story would result in someone dying, then you hold off," she says. "You essentially set aside your loyalty to your audience for this other loyalty to the preservation of life."
But other situations are not as clear-cut.
Two Scenarios
Let's say a reporter learns from anonymous sources that the FBI is wiretapping a corrupt governor.
"You call the FBI and say, 'hey is it true you're wiretapping the governor?' They might say it's true but you can't publish that," McBride says. "Then you'll say, 'how long is your warrant for? When will you be done wiretapping?' And they'd tell you when they think they'd be done."
In that case it would be "perfectly appropriate to hold off for a short period of time on publishing some information when they can demonstrate that publication will compromise the justice system," McBride says.
"You can't argue that you're serving your audience better by telling them today that the governor is being wiretapped as opposed to telling them two days from now that he was wiretapped," she adds.
But McBride raises another scenario: A reporter finds out the government has accidentally released a harmful agent into the water supply. A government official tells the reporter that publishing a story about the accident will produce mass panic, but if the reporter keeps quiet for 48 hours the government will have a vaccine developed to protect the public.
"In that situation, the value of telling your audience what's happening now clearly outweighs the other concerns," McBride says.
