Here are some ideas to think about as you launch these discussions in your newsroom:

Structure for learning is important

Think about times and ways when your staff really learns best. What are the key ingredients? There are a number of ways to use this handbook material. You might blueprint and conduct workshops for staff to read and discuss the handbook and case studies.

One possibility is to do a series of 60- to 90-minute workshops. Use one study per session, and connect that case study to the pertinent sections of the handbook. Or you might do several longer training sessions of half day or full day in which you tackle chapters of the handbook and related case studies. Or you might create some discussion groups from within your newsroom’s desks, sections, bureaus or teams, with each group working its way through the handbook over a designated period of time.

Size of the group is important

Create a discussion group that is large enough to have some critical mass and diversity of opinion, yet not so large that it prevents meaningful participation from everyone. One benchmark is the shorter the time period for the discussion, the smaller the size of the group. Consider groups of eight to 16 participants, and try for a mix of individuals with different job responsibilities to enrich the discussions based on experiences.

Preparation for the session is important

Have the participants read the material they will use before they come to the workshop so you can maximize the time together. (Depending on the particular case study you use, you might have the participants read all the material or just some of it. If you use a case study scenario with developing layers, you would not give participants all the material ahead of time.)

Leadership of the sessions is important

Designate a facilitator for each discussion, and give that individual some training and guidance. The facilitator should be familiar with the handbook material and should be skilled at leading a spirited, yet focused, discussion. The facilitator should guide the session, not preach or present answers. The facilitator should be good at framing the purpose of the workshop; asking open-ended, nonjudgmental questions; refocusing when necessary and summarizing key points; and drawing all participants into the discussion. You would be wise to conduct a training session for all the workshop facilitators before you do the workshops with staff.

Accountability is important

The degree of learning is directly proportional to the effort committed. Make sure the participants know the workshop is a priority and they are expected to come on time, not be distracted by other duties and stay for the full session.

Support “from the top” is important

The editor might send a note to all participants ahead of time emphasizing the importance of the sessions and a note to each person afterward thanking the participant for attending and asking for feedback.

Place is important

Hold the workshops/discussions in a room that is conducive to discussion and interaction. Minimize distractions from phones and other workers. Consider food and beverages for the participants.

Feedback and follow-up are important

Build in a process for participants to easily offer thoughts and suggestions on the workshops. Acknowledge their feedback. Devise additional learning opportunities to advance the discussions. Make sure all editors and supervisors look for ways to incorporate the handbook’s lessons into day-to-day work.

Guide 1--- "You're Biased"

Use this scenario to discuss: Explaining to readers (Chapter I)

Situation

TEACHING TIPS Use role playing as one way to discuss this case. Ask some staff members to be the readers critical of your coverage. Have them debate the issues with other staff members who stay in their normal role as reporters and editors. Debrief by asking participants to say what they thought they heard from the other side.

Our newspaper publishes a story about a local public official who has just been arrested in a case involving domestic abuse of his wife.

Police are saying little about the case, and the accused official has not responded to our calls. His wife says this was all a “misunderstanding” and doesn’t want him charged.

The public official has been in the forefront of Democratic politics for years and is up for re-election in six months. He is also a longtime leader of local Hispanic organizations.

We run the story on the front of the local news section. It was scheduled to run above the fold with a photo of the official. But an important late-breaking story prompted a page redesign, and the story ended up running below the fold without a photo.

Our paper receives about a dozen calls and e-mails from readers, all critical of our story and its play in the paper.

Some say the newspaper should have given the story more prominent play, and they cite it as another example of liberal bias in the media.

Discussion questions

• How do we respond to these complaints?
• How do we assess their legitimacy?
• What is our obligation to explain our decision-making to readers who complain?
• What is our obligation to let the rest of our readers know about the complaints?
• How might our newspaper reflect these complaints?

Use this case to discuss: Responding to readers (Chapter I)

Situation

Our paper is receiving calls and letters complaining about the way we covered the story of Jesse Jackson’s affair with a former staff member and the birth of their daughter.

TEACHING TIPS Select a recent story from your paper that produced this kind of criticism from readers about bias. Invite a few of those critics to one of your workshops and include them in discussion of this case.

One caller says, “You buried the story about Jackson. … You have no guts at all. This is proof of your continuing bias. Christians, mostly white, get the shaft. Blacks and Democrats get away with everything.”

One letter writer says, “I have been tempted to discontinue your paper many, many times because of biased reporting (a constant attack against conservatives and/or Republicans and high praises for liberals and/or Democrats), but Friday’s paper really wins the contest. If Sen. John Ashcroft had even winked at another woman, he would have merited five full pages of disparagement, including a front-page spread with color pictures.

“I found the tiny article about the Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of the Democratic Party’s leading figures, in a little corner of the front page with two thumb-sized pictures and the headline ‘Scandal may not damage Jackson.’ It went on to note that ‘Observers say he should emerge with his activist credentials intact.’

“This kind of scandal in the Republican Party would have received pages upon pages of related articles for days and possibly even weeks. Please — you people are so obvious it is incredible.”

Discussion questions

• How do we respond to complaints from our readers about our coverage? What is our obligation to address the specifics of their complaints?
• How do we assess the legitimacy of the complaints?
• Do we have a responsibility to explain our decision-making process on certain stories? When should we do this? How much should we reveal?

Use this case to discuss: Reader communication (Chapter I)

Ethics and fairness (Chapter IV)

Situation

TEACHING TIPS Try role playing in this case with workshop participants as the reporters, editors, police officials, relatives of the victims and readers.

A story in The Washington Post about a Silver Spring, Md., couple killed in an explosion at their home prompted considerable negative reaction from the victims’ family and from Post readers.

It was a second-day story describing how the couple’s children and other family were coping with the deaths of Stanley and Joan Herman. Deep in the story was one sentence that referred to Stanley Herman having a criminal record for child sexual abuse.

Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler wrote a column in response to the coverage and the criticism. Getler said, “The callers and e-mailers all said it seemed irrelevant to the story.”

Discussion questions — Ethics, fairness, accuracy

• What journalistic justification is there to include the court records information about a person’s past in a story of this nature? How do you weigh the use of that information against the potential harm?
• Does it matter that the information about the victim’s child sexual abuse is only one sentence in the middle of a long story?
• Have we had similar stories involving pejorative details about a person’s life where we had to weigh the value of accuracy vs. harm to the victim’s family? How did we handle those stories?
• How do we use proper “tone” and “proportion” in stories where we decide we must include negative information about someone who cannot defend himself?
• The reporters did not think the sex-crime information was relevant, Getler wrote, but senior editors did. How might a difference of opinion between reporters and editors play out at our paper? What questions would be asked? Whose voice would carry weight?

Discussion questions — Reader communication, accountability

• Would our paper be as willing to reveal its journalistic and ethical decision-making process to our readers as The Washington Post did in this case? If so, who would write to the readers? If not, why not?
• What protocols do we have in place to inform our readers about how and why we make the decisions we do? How often do we do this?
• What barriers exist at our paper to improve reader communication efforts? How can we improve?

FOR SON, MOURNING AND MEMENTOS

Parents’ Belongings Are Found Near Md. Home Destroyed in Explosion

By Phuong Ly and Katherine Shaver, Washington Post staff writers

Carefully stepping through charred plywood and broken bricks, Mike Herman searched yesterday for memories of his parents.

Herman and about six other family members found and gathered in cardboard boxes the few things still intact after a massive gas explosion killed Stanley and Joan Herman and destroyed their Silver Spring home Monday.

A recent bill from the dentist was still readable. A Victorian-style doll wore a pink ruffled dress with a few smoke stains. Stacks of Spider-Man comic books that Stan Herman had collected survived in their plastic covers, undamaged. And a blue Dallas Cowboys insulated cooler remained clean in its plastic bag, a gift that Mike Herman believes his mother was planning to give to him for his birthday next month.

“I still don’t believe it,” said Herman, 31, shaking his head as he stood amid the debris. “I’m standing here, but it hasn’t hit me.”

Investigators said yesterday that the explosion was caused by natural gas — probably a large buildup of gas inside the home that was ignited by some movement of power in the house, such as someone flipping on a light switch or the refrigerator motor cycling on. The blast severely damaged 12 other homes and was heard as far away as Chevy Chase.

Brian Geraci, assistant Montgomery County fire marshal, said investigators ruled out foul play after specially trained dogs detected no scent of explosive material or fire accelerants near the home at 1117 Cresthaven Dr. in the Hillandale neighborhood.

However, Geraci said, investigators were surprised at the force of the explosion, which hurled debris almost two miles and left clothing and chunks of plywood lodged 50 to 100 feet above ground in surrounding trees.

Most natural gas explosions aren’t so intense, because they occur at lower gas levels, he said.

People often notice gas levels before they get as high as they did in the Cresthaven Drive home, he said, noting that a rotten-egg smell is added to the odorless gas to alert people to leaks.

Geraci said the damage to the home was the worst he has seen in his 25-year career.

“None of the investigators here has seen a scene like this,” Geraci said. “It’s just unusual to have this high a concentration of gas without having someone smell it. … The question of the day is, why didn’t they smell the gas? We can’t know that answer.”

None of the gas lines leading to the home showed leaks, and no one reported anything suspicious before Monday’s 8:45 a.m. explosion, said Tim Sargeant, a spokesman for Washington Gas.

Geraci said investigators may never know the source of the gas leak inside the home.

Investigators for the Consumer Product Safety Commission found no obvious problems with the home’s gas furnace and hot water heater, and the rest of the appliances were electric, Geraci said.

The appliances will be sent to a lab for closer inspection, but the blast was so forceful that it took most of the potential evidence with it, Geraci said. Investigators haven’t found the home’s gas meter, which probably would have melted in the fire, and they may never find a damaged internal gas line, he said.

“If the appliances come back fine [from the lab], then we’re probably not going to know what happened here,” Geraci said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know what the ignition source was.”

Because investigators don’t know where a leak may have occurred, they can’t determine how long it would have taken the house to fill with gas or whether the occupants might have become desensitized to the odor over time, Sargeant said. The rotten-egg odor is designed to be strong enough to wake people, he said.

Stanley Herman, 62, was found in his bed, which had fallen through the top floor and down into the basement, Geraci said. Joan Herman, 63, was found in the kitchen area. The medical examiner’s office has requested additional medical records before making an official identification, police said.

On Monday, county building inspectors declared 12 other houses, which were damaged in the blast, unsafe to be lived in, forcing those families to stay with friends or relatives. After another look yesterday, inspectors said they believe about half those homes could be occupied after a structural engineer examines stress fractures in them, said county spokeswoman Donna Bigler. Two or three homes with more serious damage could take two to three weeks to fix, Bigler said, and the rest probably require fewer repairs.

Chris Paladino, who lives two houses down from the Hermans, said the floorboards in his ranch house were separated and the stairs were cracked. The home’s back wall also moved about three inches away from the rest of the house, he said.

The explosion pulled a poinsettia plant, roots and all, out of its pot and through the front bay window, Paladino said. The plant’s ceramic pot, however, was undamaged.

Paladino, a spokesman for the Red Cross, said officials have told him it may take as much as eight weeks before engineers and inspectors from the county and his insurance company complete a thorough investigation of his house.

“But we were very lucky,” he said. “We’re all okay.”

Joan Herman was a retired nurse, according to Mike Herman. Stanley Herman, also retired, had been a television repairman and later drove a county Ride On bus and worked at a Gaithersburg car dealership. Court records in Montgomery County show he was ordered to serve eight weekends in jail in 1999 after pleading guilty to child sexual abuse.

The Hermans had been married for more than 30 years, and it was the second marriage for both. Joan Herman had four children from a previous marriage, and Stanley Herman had one. Together, they had two sons, said Mike Herman, the younger son.

A few photos of the Hermans’ “loads and loads” of grandchildren were discovered in the woods near the Capital Beltway, a couple of miles from the home, Mike Herman said.

Relatives also found Monopoly money in the bushes near the Beltway, part of the Lionel train version of the game that Stanley Herman had received for Christmas. Later, they uncovered the game board in the back yard.

“We’ll miss them,” said Mike Herman, a professional trainer who lives in Montgomery Village. “We loved them very much.”

The Washington Post, Jan. 3, 2001

GRIEVING OVER NEWS

By Michael Getler, Washington Post ombudsman

Last week was a brutal week for the Herman family of Silver Spring.

A massive gas explosion on Monday destroyed the home of Stanley and Joan Herman, killing them both. The blast, described by a county fire captain as a “catastrophic event” because of its force, also severely damaged a dozen homes nearby. The Post put the news story on the front page Tuesday.

When some unusual explosion or fire takes place, police, and reporters, routinely run criminal background checks to see if there is a reason to suspect foul play; a murder-suicide, for example.

The checks, which involve matters of public record, did turn up the fact that Mr. Herman, 62, had pleaded guilty to sexual molestation charges involving children. The reporters passed this information to their editors, along with everything else they could learn about the explosion and the effects on the surviving children and grandchildren. Late on Tuesday, the two reporters working on the story for the Wednesday paper quoted the assistant county fire marshal as saying that inspectors had ruled out foul play in the explosion, and the reporters did not include the sex-crime information in their draft article, because it did not appear relevant.

Senior editors, however, took a different view and asked that the sex crime be included.

So Wednesday’s newspaper brought another hammer blow upon the Herman family. Deep inside a story that was mostly about family members searching the debris for memories, and about how such a ferocious blast could have been ignited, was a single sentence referring to Stanley Herman that read: “Court records in Montgomery County show he was ordered to serve eight weekends in jail in 1999 after pleading guilty to child sexual abuse.”

The inclusion of that sentence in a story about a grieving family produced a heavy outpouring of criticism of The Post, both by friends of the family and by people who didn’t know them but were incensed that the paper saw a need to inflict that information about a now-dead parent, without any context, on the family and its friends and neighbors. As seriously as people take such crimes, the callers and e-mailers all said it seemed irrelevant to this story.

They surmised that few if anyone outside the family knew of Mr. Herman’s crime. “They just got kicked in the head, and then The Washington Post piled on,” is the way one caller put it.

“That was a line that didn’t need to be crossed,” said another. “How has the public’s need to know been advanced?”

Jo-Ann Armao, assistant managing editor in charge of the Metro section, says she wrestled with this issue, discussed it with executive editor Leonard Downie and decided that because the Wednesday article would have some biographical information about the Hermans in it, the paper would treat it also as an obituary in which “we include both ‘good and bad’ information.

We don’t censor out unfavorable information.” And, she adds, there is always the “what if” factor. For a non-public figure, as Mr. Herman clearly was, a family can decline to cooperate and not have an obituary written. But because of the news nature of the explosion, Armao explained, “we could not offer that option.”

These are tough calls for newspapers. By the Thursday paper, police were still saying that they

did not believe the explosion resulted from a murder-suicide, but fire investigators were reexamining some aspects of the incident.

Still, with the report that foul play had been ruled out, it is hard to see how the crime information met the test of relevance for that Wednesday paper. And that story was hardly an obituary in any real sense. Including Herman’s crime in that story at that time inflicted a lot more pain on the family. Newspapers sift through information all the time. They don’t have to put everything in just because they know it.

The Washington Post, Jan. 7, 2001

Guide 4 --- "Shedding Fear, Prejudice"

Use this case to discuss: Community connections (Chapter II)

Situation

Seattle Times reporter Aly Colón wrote a front-page story about a Korean-American businessman who was trying to attract a broader base of customers to a Seattle minimall “that’s long been a neighborhood eyesore.”

TEACHING TIPS Identify several untapped “listening posts” in your community that might help you better cover issues of race/ethnicity. Identify the barriers that have kept you from drawing on those “listening posts.” Discuss ways to move ahead.

The story focuses on the shopping center’s landlord, Chris Kim, “who has been the impetus for change.”

While it is an article about business development, the core of the story is race relations in a multicultural community. We learn that Kim has had to address his prejudices toward African-Americans, turning to his religious convictions to give him strength to overcome hatred.

Discussion questions

• How is this story framed? Does the description of the circumstances, motives and emotions ring true? If so, why?
• This story focuses on Kim and his perception of the cultural differences between African-Americans and Korean-Americans. What risks does the writer take by not including more perspective from African-Americans? Can this story measure up on a fairness scale without more African-American voices on this issue? Is fairness best measured on one story alone or on a broad range of coverage by the paper on this issue?
• How prepared are we at our paper to find stories like this one and to report them with accurate descriptions? Where are our “listening posts” that provide us knowledge and insight to our communities. How do we learn more about our emerging ethnic communities? Whom do we use as “guides” to help us become smarter?
• In what ways do we address the issue of race relations? How competent are we? How can we become better?
• This story uses Kim’s religious convictions as a key element of his thinking about race relations. How often and how well do we include religion and faith as part of stories that are focused on something other than religion/faith?
• Colón redefined his paper’s coverage of diversity issues in his role as both a diversity beat writer and as the paper’s diversity coach. In his reporting, he looks for what he calls “the intersections where different types of people meet, deal with each other and get challenged by the circumstances that take place at the intersection.” Where are the intersections in our community? How often do we go there? How effectively?

Background

Colón said he wanted this article to be a story about a community and its attempts to address its past and how it was trying to understand what its future might be. He also was trying to get an authentic understanding of Kim’s purpose for reaching out.

“His initial responses were very politically correct and pat to my ears. He was saying all the right things. I felt there had to be something more. I kept probing. I went back a second day after spending three or four hours with him the first day.

“Toward the end of the second day I learned about the incident involving the youth. I finally elicited the element of faith that was the core catalyst for all the other things he had said. … This was really what brought him to that particular stage of wanting to take those kinds of steps … to interact with people who were different from him, specifically African-Americans.”

Colón intentionally made the readers go a ways into the article before the story turned specifically to Kim. “I wanted the focus of the story to be as broad and encompassing as possible. If I had focused only on the merchant himself, then the story would have been told only from his viewpoint. If I had gone to business neighbors or community groups, then the story would have been from their vantage point. I thought it was important to describe what was (in the past) and pull back to show how the stakeholders viewed what was taking place from their different perspectives. And then from that pull further back and into the individual who was the catalyst for all their old and new perspectives because they had their own preconceptions of what the mall was like and they didn’t know what he was going to accomplish in the future. They had questions and suspicions. I wanted this to be a human story, not an issue story.”

Use this case to discuss: Community connections (Chapter II)

Situation

Chicago Tribune staff writer Rob Kaiser wrote a story about a local man who sits atop a large rock and talks with neighborhood residents.

TEACHING TIPS Include readers in the session when you discuss this case. See what they think about this story and how their reactions compare with those of your staff.

Kaiser said, “The rock and John Klarner are fixtures in my neighborhood. … Things were gravitating toward him. In this neighborhood where everybody is too busy to get to know each other, he serves as a common ground where diverse people gather and get to know each other.”

The Tribune ran the story and a photo of Big John atop the rock as a “City Watch” piece on the metro cover.

Discussion questions

• Does this description of the situation ring true? Does it seem authentic? Will people recognize the themes?
• Kaiser said he wrote this story about Klarner because “he serves as a common ground where diverse people come together and get to know each other.” Does this story work in terms of Kaiser’s goal of storytelling? In what ways? How is this story framed?
• Kaiser said he observed Klarner for a number of days in that neighborhood where both lived. “I would see him every day on my way to the bus and on the way home. He always had a crowd of people around him. I’d walk past and observe and listen, and after a while, I realized something special was going on … how different he was … but how magnetic despite those differences.” What does this tell us about Kaiser’s reporting technique? What can we learn from this?
• How successful is our paper at finding and telling stories about “difference.” How do we portray people who are different?
• Where are our observation points and listening posts to connect with our community? How often and how well do we establish new opportunities to meet people and find stories?

Background

Kaiser had been working at the Chicago Tribune for about five months when he wrote this story. He said this story was similar in nature to other stories he had written for the Tribune but that it was different in style. Kaiser said he went up to Klarner and told him about the story idea and “he was very receptive and kind of excited.” Kaiser said he had confidence in the authenticity of the story because he would observe Klarner on a daily basis (while coming and going to work) to get to know him better. “One of the things that struck me as interesting — other than the dynamic of the neighborhood and his effect — was the difference between what you see and what the reality is. It happens a lot in a big city where the same people pass each other every day and never know each other. Certain impressions develop, and with John the impression on the surface is of a semi-homeless guy many people might mistake for a bum. You delve into it, and you get to know his story and you find this fascinating life behind all that.”

Kaiser said he “checked him out pretty thoroughly with a routine background check and a criminal check to make sure he was somebody worthy of doing a story” and to make sure there wasn’t anything problematic in his background. Kaiser said that he decided not to get into some aspects of Klarner’s life, such as his common law marriages, for a story like this one. “I needed to keep it tightly focused on the present with a sense of the past to give the story context,” he said. “You have to pick and choose what you use, not necessarily to ensure that the story is flattering or doesn’t pry into their private life but you don’t want to distract the reader with bits of information that aren’t necessarily relevant or aren’t important.”

Kaiser said he got quite a bit of feedback on the story. One man talking to Klarner at the rock said he really liked the story and felt there should be more of those stories in the paper. Kaiser said the impression he got from readers is they want “more news about regular people and neighborhoods.”

Chicago Tribune, Aug 29. 1997

Guide 6 --- "On the Verge"

Use this case to discuss: Community coverage (Chapter II)

Situation

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram published a series of stories in 2000 about “the confusing and tumultuous lives of teen-agers — kids on the verge of adulthood and big decisions. … The everyday lives of teen-agers — their personal struggles, hopes and fears — often go unnoticed and unreported.”

Editor Jeannine Guttman, in a column to readers, said that the reporter for the series, Barbara Walsh, “had to discard a lot of her traditional learnings. She made it a point to rarely talk to experts. She didn’t interview many parents. She kept her focus on teen-agers — period, and set out with no preconceived notions, no general idea of where the story line would take her.”

TEACHING TIPS Focus on techniques the reporter used to report the story. Identify times when your paper took some risks in reporting by using unconventional techniques. What conditions supported those risks?

Walsh said she “had to ignore a lot of my journalistic training” in reporting and writing this series. “Instead of focusing on the extreme culture, looking for kids who did really bad things or towns where pregnancy rates were higher than normal, I searched for ordinary teens struggling with everyday problems, fears, pressures.”

Discussion questions

• Guttman wrote a column explaining some of the reasons behind the paper’s “On the Verge” series. She said, “The interesting thing about using a different journalism model to do standard reporting is that readers notice the change immediately. … Whenever we use this new model, we find that readers react much differently to the stories.” Why might that be?
• How willing and able are we at our paper to try “a different journalism model to do standard reporting”? When and how might we try that? What new story frames would we need to use for covering issues and people?
• Walsh wrote that in “capturing their stories, I also had to use different reporting techniques. During most of my career, I rarely used a tape recorder. I didn’t trust them and dreaded transcribing the tapes. But I soon learned teens talked differently than adults.” What can we learn from Walsh’s reflections on her reporting techniques? What different reporting and writing techniques would we consider if we used a “different journalism model”?
• Walsh’s series relied heavily on the voices of the teens with little use of “expert” voices in the stories. She said that while she did not “interview” many experts, she “did talk with a lot of experts to get their feedback … (to) make sure I’m on target.” “I want the kids’ voices to be strongest in the stories … to not let (the voices of experts) clutter the stories.” Does that work here? Why? Why not? What can we learn from that approach?
• Walsh said she always agonized over her stories. “I lose sleep … because they are kids. I grow really attached to these kids and how much they are telling me. I don’t like the feeling that I’m done with them and it’s over.” Walsh said she was judicious in what she reported from her observations and interviews but also wanted to portray a realistic picture of the lives of the teens. “I realize they’re kids. … I want to be very careful with them, extra sensitive. I don’t feel like I’ve left anything important out of the stories. It’s their stories.”
• How effective is our paper in giving reporters the time and support to do this kind of intensive reporting where it’s essential to build trust in the relationships with story subjects? If we are not effective, what can we do to improve?
• Walsh said she tried “really hard to be fair and not sensationalize” the stories. That is reflected in both what she put in the paper and how she dealt directly with the teen-agers. “I told (the teens) I would read them quotes and tell them themes. Part of me says it would be OK to show (the story) to the kids,” but she and the editors did not take that step. “One (teen’s) parents said they wanted to read the story before it went into print. I agonized over it. The editor and I decided we couldn’t do that.”
• How well do our editors and writers collaborate in discussing the potential ethical pitfalls in this type of reporting? What guidelines and protocols does our paper have for reporter-source relationships? For verifying information?
• Walsh said the “On the Verge” project was “a challenging, rewarding and terrifying experience.” How often and how successfully does our paper venture into that territory?

About the series

“On the Verge” is an occasional series, appearing in the Maine Sunday Telegram, about the confusing and tumultuous lives of Maine teen-agers — kids on the verge of adulthood and big decisions. Since August 1999, we have spent time capturing the stories of teens and the challenges they face in their everyday lives.

Part One: The Pressure to be Cool

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram asked five students to talk about their struggles to fit in. They are seventh-graders who never get invited to the populars’ parties’, a student-body president who revels in pep rallies, homecomings and prom nights, a poetic teen-ager with spiked orange hair and a loathing for all things mainstream; and a brave girl who came out and became a social outcast.

ON THE WEB Find the rest of the series on the web at 20below.mainetoday .com/.

Part Two: Tempted and Tormented

There are 124,000 teen-agers in Maine struggling with growing pressure to have sex sooner. Before they outgrow the fickle, tumultuous and emotionally vexing adolescent years, they’ll have their hearts pulled, expanded and shattered. Here are the stories of nine Maine teen-agers stumbling their way through romance, unrequited love, unrelenting urges and, for some, conflicting cultural values.

Part Three: Families Lost and Found

Many Maine teens feel the shock waves of broken homes. For them, family is anything but traditional. Here are the stories of six Maine teens struggling to figure out their own families. They are two sisters who fell apart after their family collapsed; a gay teen who found two new “mummies” after his parents divorced and he ended up homeless; an 18-year-old girl who grew up with a single mom and too many drunk and abusive men in the house; and two siblings who live in a happy yet hectic family.

Part Four: When Colors Converge

Read about Maine teens trying to sort out race and racism, skin color and stereotypes, friendship and fears. Here are the stories of two girls who grew up biracial and slip between two worlds; a Korean girl who was adopted soon after birth; five buddies, one black, another biracial and three white, who grew up together on basketball courts and football fields, forging a friendship blind to color, and multilingual students at King Middle School.

Part Five: The Frenzy of the Fast Lane

Read about Maine teens dealing with stress and pressure. They are: a sleep-starved senior frantically trying get accepted to the college of her choice; a student who succeeds despite growing up in a turbulent, troubled family; two eighth-grade girls trying to figure out how to stay cool despite the pressure to get straight A’s; and two 14-year-old girls who dream of college and careers despite living in a neighborhood where drugs, alcohol and despair are constant companions.

About the series

“On the Verge” is an occasional series, appearing in the Maine Sunday Telegram, about the confusing and tumultuous lives of Maine teen-agers — kids on the verge of adulthood and big decisions. Since August 1999, we have spent time capturing the stories of teens and the challenges they face in their everyday lives.

Part One: The Pressure to be Cool

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram asked five students to talk about their struggles to fit in. They are seventh-graders who never get invited to the populars’ parties’, a student-body president who revels in pep rallies, homecomings and prom nights, a poetic teen-ager with spiked orange hair and a loathing for all things mainstream; and a brave girl who came out and became a social outcast.

Part Two: Tempted and Tormented

There are 124,000 teen-agers in Maine struggling with growing pressure to have sex sooner. Before they outgrow the fickle, tumultuous and emotionally vexing adolescent years, they’ll have their hearts pulled, expanded and shattered. Here are the stories of nine Maine teen-agers stumbling their way through romance, unrequited love, unrelenting urges and, for some, conflicting cultural values.

Part Three: Families Lost and Found

Many Maine teens feel the shock waves of broken homes. For them, family is anything but traditional. Here are the stories of six Maine teens struggling to figure out their own families. They are two sisters who fell apart after their family collapsed; a gay teen who found two new “mummies” after his parents divorced and he ended up homeless; an 18-year-old girl who grew up with a single mom and too many drunk and abusive men in the house; and two siblings who live in a happy yet hectic family.

Part Four: When Colors Converge

Read about Maine teens trying to sort out race and racism, skin color and stereotypes, friendship and fears. Here are the stories of two girls who grew up biracial and slip between two worlds; a Korean girl who was adopted soon after birth; five buddies, one black, another biracial and three white, who grew up together on basketball courts and football fields, forging a friendship blind to color, and multilingual students at King Middle School.

Part Five: The Frenzy of the Fast Lane

Read about Maine teens dealing with stress and pressure. They are: a sleep-starved senior frantically trying get accepted to the college of her choice; a student who succeeds despite growing up in a turbulent, troubled family; two eighth-grade girls trying to figure out how to stay cool despite the pressure to get straight A’s; and two 14-year-old girls who dream of college and careers despite living in a neighborhood where drugs, alcohol and despair are constant companions.

Guide 7 --- When to Publish a Correction

Use this scenario to discuss: Corrections (Chapter III)

The newsroom may find it difficult to establish a common threshold for corrections because there isn’t always time to discuss each one thoroughly. Discussing these scenarios with staff members before embarking on an accuracy effort may help:

TEACHING TIPS Use these discussions to create a non defensive atmosphere for talking about mistakes and how to improve accuracy. Ask participants to talk about how such an error might occur in their work rather than focusing on how someone else goofed.

A wire story following up on an airplane crash says it happened in 1998, when it actually happened in 1988. The lead of the story, however, referred to the crash “more than a decade ago.” A copy editor notices and reports the problem the next morning.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction?

Virginia E. Smith is a local entrepreneur who is profiled on the business cover. However, the story refers to her as Virginia A. Smith. Smith calls to report the error but says she does not think a correction is necessary.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction even when the subject doesn’t want one? Does it make a difference that no one else complained?

John Jacobsen is a local businessman who wins a big contract. His name is spelled correctly in the story. But the caption identifies him as “John Jacobson.” Several of Jacobsen’s friends call the newspaper to express their disappointment in the misspelling.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction? Does it make a difference that the public noticed?

An advance on a local theater performance gives the wrong address for the event. Any correction will appear after the event.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction?

A column about cultural celebration refers in passing to a historical event. The date is off by one year. No one calls about the error, but the columnist notices it the next day.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction? Does it matter that no one from the public complained? Does it matter that the mistake is peripheral to the column’s focus?

A business story details how a local company has earned $1 billion. The headline refers to a profit of $1 million. Several staff members notice it the next day.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction? Does it matter that the story is correct? What about the discrepancy between “earned” in the story and “profit” in the headline?

A report on the death of a skier says she died during her high school club practice. School officials object, saying practice had ended and the skier was on her own when she died.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction?
• What if other authorities involved in the investigation say the death happened during practice?

A wire story about proposed tax cuts features an analysis by a national accounting firm on what Americans at different income levels might save. After publication, it turns out the firm’s analysis for a couple in one bracket was wrong.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction? Do we explain that the error originated with the accounting firm?

A follow-up story about an ongoing case of computer fraud refers to one suspect who was arrested and charged earlier on two felony counts. But it turns out he had plead guilty to a single felony charge by the time the follow-up appeared.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction?

A local official is the subject of a story with a file photo. Another person, who is not part of the current story, is misidentified in the caption.

• Could the error have been prevented? How?
• Do we publish a correction?
• What if the misidentified person is so recognizable (the governor, for example) that the mistake seems obvious?

Use this case to discuss: Acknowledging mistakes (Chapter III)

Sensationalistic coverage (Chapter IV)

Situation

TEACHING TIPS Try using this case in different ways. You could give participants just the photo and column (but not the readers representative’s column) to see what they identify as issues and/or concerns. Or you could give them the full scenario including the reaction from readers. Or you could ask participants to role play this case — someone as the boy in the photo, as the boy’s parents, as readers, as the photographer, as the editor.

The St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press published a large picture on the local section cover showing a 16-year-old boy peering into the barrel of a handgun. The picture accompanied a column profiling a local police officer who goes to area schools to talk with students about crime prevention and gun safety. The photo caption did not point out that the gun was inoperable.

The photo drew strong, negative reaction from some readers.

Pioneer Press Reader Advocate Nancy Conner wrote about the case in her weekly column. She quoted readers’ criticisms and explained how that photo ended up in the paper without the normal editorial oversight.

Discussion questions

• What can we learn from the readers’ reactions to the photo that accompanied this story on fake guns?
• What are the competing values that come into play in this situation? Who are the stakeholders?
• When and how can a newspaper publish photos that likely will upset or anger readers?
• What responsibility does the editor have to make sure readers understand the reasons for publishing such photos?
• Conner wrote that “the newspaper published this powerful image without an internal discussion that normally would take place in deciding about potentially controversial, sensitive pictures of stories.” Could a similar weakness in the process occur at our paper? If so, when? How? What can we do to guard against it?
• How often and how well do we explain to our readers why we’ve published a controversial photo? Are we proactive in that explanation, or do we wait to defend ourselves after we hear complaints?

CRITICS TAKE AIM AT DECISION TO USE PHOTO OF YOUTH LOOKING INTO GUN

By Nancy Conner, reader advocate

When they opened Monday’s newspaper, readers were confronted with a large picture on the Local section cover showing a 16-year-old boy peering into the barrel of a handgun. About two dozen people called to say they were appalled and astounded.

“I think it’s absurd that you ran that photo,” said Dr. Frank Whitesell of Amery, Wis. “I take care of kids who get damaged that way. It shocked me. The first rule is that every gun is loaded.”

The picture contradicted safety rules that people work to instill in young people, said callers who teach gun-safety classes for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the St. Paul Fire Department and the Minneapolis Police Department.

Other callers were parents who feared young children might mimic the picture, not knowing it accompanied a staff column with an important message that real and toy guns look alike to police officers in threatening situations and the results can be deadly.

“What were you thinking? Who OK’d this decision? Wasn’t there someone along the line who said, ‘No, this is not appropriate?’” asked Dotty Loida, a North St. Paul licensed home day-care provider.

In the newsroom critique session Monday morning, some editors also raised objections. The concerns prompted a review of the process that had led to this photo’s publication.

In short, the newspaper published this powerful image without an internal discussion that normally would take place in deciding about potentially controversial, sensitive pictures or stories.

Some of the editors who handled the photo did not anticipate how it might affect people, while others wanted to use a strong image to draw readers into the column. The writer never saw it, nor did Managing Editor Vicki Gowler, who was the top editor on duty Sunday but was not called at home to consult about the photo.

“We have a process, and it failed us this time,” Gowler concluded.

She emphasized to the staff last week that she and editor Walker Lundy need to be involved in decisions such as this.

“If we are considering content that we think could shock or disturb or offend readers, we need to take extra steps to make sure that there is a good reason for using it and then make sure we present it well,” Gowler said. “In this case, we should have published a more detailed explanation of why we were using this photo and how it fit with this story, if it did.”

What readers encountered was a page layout with the photo at the top showing the boy pointing the gun at his face — he did not have a finger on the trigger. Underneath was a caption explaining he was examining the pistol during a police program on how officers have a hard time telling the difference between real and fake firearms. Below that was the headline, “The Real Story on Fake Guns.” Also on the cover was a photo illustration of 10 real and fake handguns, labeled by type.

The photo’s path into the paper began when staff photographer Joe Oden and public safety columnist Ruben Rosario visited one of Minneapolis Police Officer Ron Reier’s presentations for ninth-graders at Washburn High School.

Reier said he tries to make teens realize how powerful guns are and how easily real and fake guns can be confused.

At the end of his class, Reier allows students to handle the demonstration guns — some real, some fake — as long as they do not point them at anyone or pull the trigger.

“Every one of these guns had been totally deactivated,” Reier said last week. He praised Rosario’s column, but pointed out that it and the photo caption failed to mention that the guns were inoperable, which might have helped.

Reier said he usually watches the students closely but was talking with Rosario while Oden shot photos.

Oden said when one of the boys began examining the barrel he immediately knew it would make the best picture for drawing readers into the column. But Oden didn’t recommend it to the photo desk. “I didn’t think we would have run it, because it would be too controversial,” he said.

Two photo editors, however, did recommend the photo as part of the package. The news editor Sunday night, Sherri Hildebrandt, said she relied on their judgment and did not look closely at the photo until she opened the earliest edition off the press at about 11 p.m. “I thought, wow, this is really big. We are going to get calls tomorrow.”

The editors also noted the photographer did not indicate if the gun was real or fake, but they did not make calls then to find out. (For the record, it was a real but disabled .45-caliber handgun, Reier said.)

On Monday after the night editors discussed the controversy, Hildebrandt took a call from a reader. He said his first reaction was “holy catfish” because his brother was injured as a child when he looked down the barrel of a loaded pellet gun. “I’m sure I’ll remember his call when faced with another such photo decision,” she said.

Dean Vatnsdal, the student in the photo, said he took some good-natured ribbing but wasn’t bothered by the photo display.

“It said right on it that I was examining it,” he said. “I was looking down the barrel to see how it was deactivated, because they had tape over where the bullet goes in so you couldn’t open it and look through it that way.”

Dean’s mother, Amy Vatnsdal, said, “I thought it was a weird picture to pick, because you shouldn’t look down the barrel of a gun.” But people who read the column would understand the setting was safe, she said, adding that her son has hunted and learned gun safety from family and friends.

Which photo would Dean have used? “Probably that one, because it was the most attracting and people would read the column.”

Bob Steele and Keith Woods, ethics specialists at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla., reviewed the story and photo, which I faxed to them.

The photo startled Woods. “I thought you had captured a moment in which a child was trying to kill himself,” he said.

The problem, Woods said, is that the photo radically distracted from the column’s message that kids shouldn’t play with any gun, fake or real. If editors wanted to salvage the photo, he suggested they could have added a line above it indicating the teen was handling the gun in the wrong way and made sure everything else in the package was tied to safety messages.

Steele would have a problem using the photo at all.

“It still would be about a young man pointing a weapon in his face, which is not what the story is about,” Steele said. “It takes a very small element of this police officer’s session and puts the focus on the wrong thing.”

That’s the essential point.

The disturbing image didn’t support the column’s message, and it needlessly caused deep concerns among thoughtful people from different backgrounds and perspectives.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, Jan. 30, 2000

Guide 9 --- False Report on Clinton

Use this case to discuss: Accountability (Chapter I)

Correcting errors (Chapter III)

Anonymous sources (Chapter IV)

Situation

The Dallas Morning News published a story in its Jan. 27, 1998, early edition saying the staff of the independent counsel investigating President Clinton had spoken with a Secret Service agent who was prepared to testify that he saw Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in a compromising situation.

TEACHING TIPS After discussing this case, choose, at random, a recent edition of your paper. See how many stories use unnamed or anonymous sources. If there are a lot of instances, discuss what that does to the credibility of those stories and your paper.

However, in later editions, the newspaper reported on Page One that its story was inaccurate. On Feb. 1, Editor Ralph Langer wrote a long explanation to readers on why that story was withdrawn and how the paper violated its policy on the use of anonymous sources.

Discussion questions — Use of anonymous sources

• What can we learn from The Morning News case? Could we find ourselves in a similar ethical situation while reporting a big story on deadline? How might we measure up?
• Does our paper have clear and tough standards on the use of anonymous sources? If not, why not? If so, do we honor them?
• Are we as stringent in our handling of anonymous sources in wire stories and reports we take from other news organizations? Are we independent in judgment?
• Policies and standards can be ineffective without a strong decision-making protocol. Are we confident, at our paper, that we get the right people involved in important discussions and decisions? Do we ask the right questions at the right times? Are we strong enough in our decision-making capacity given the new demands of the Internet and the continuous, 24-hour news cycle?

Discussion questions — Accountability, correcting errors

Langer gave his readers considerable insight into how the paper had erred in decision-making and breached its policy on sourcing stories.

He wrote, “We expect our readers to hold us, as we hold ourselves, to a high standard of fairness and accuracy. When those standards aren’t met, we feel we owe you a full accounting.”

• What is the value of an editor revealing to readers the extent of a major mistake? How much should be revealed? Are there risks? If so, what are they?
• Are we willing to hold ourselves accountable to this level? When have we done so? When should we have done so but did not?

Guide 9 --- False Report on Clinton

INFORMATION FOR STORY INACURATE, SOURCE SAYS

The Dallas Morning News reported in its early edition Tuesday that independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s staff had spoken with a Secret Service agent who was prepared to testify that he saw President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in a compromising situation.

But the source for the story, a longtime Washington lawyer familiar with the case, later said the information provided for Tuesday’s report was inaccurate.

The source is not affiliated with Mr. Starr’s office.

The News reported Monday that a federal employee claimed to have seen the president and Ms. Lewinsky in a compromising situation in the White House. White House officials told The News that they knew of no such incident involving Mr. Clinton and the former intern.

ABC News first reported the existence of a witness during its “This Week With Sam and Cokie” program Sunday morning.

The Dallas Morning News, Page One, Jan. 27, 1998

WHY STORY WAS WITHDRAWN

By Ralph Langer, Dallas Morning News editor

The Dallas Morning News has long had a clear, tough and effective policy regarding anonymous sources.

We don’t like to use them, but recognize that sometimes they are necessary.

The policy requires that the information be vital to an important story, that it come from at least two independent sources and that it can be obtained no other way. If the information passes those tests, the decision to use unnamed sources still must be approved by senior editors.

Last week, that policy was violated in a story involving allegations that a Secret Service agent witnessed President Clinton and former intern Monica Lewinsky in a “compromising situation.”

The story was abruptly withdrawn from later editions. The controversy that followed has sparked, understandably, much criticism from our readers. We expect our readers to hold us, as we hold ourselves, to a high standard of fairness and accuracy. When those standards aren’t met, we feel we owe you a full accounting.

Here’s what happened.

Sunday morning, a Washington correspondent for The News was covering developments in the Clinton/Lewinsky controversy. ABC News had reported that day that an unidentified witness who worked in the White House had seen the president and the former intern in an “intimate encounter.”

The correspondent subsequently interviewed a well-connected Washington lawyer who said he had inside knowledge of the story. The reporter determined that the person had access to information about the case.

The next day, the reporter talked to the source again, getting further details. Later Monday, a misunderstanding between the Washington Bureau and the Dallas office led some editors to believe, wrongly, that the story had been confirmed by a second, independent source.

By evening the story was prepared for the first edition. It was provided to The Associated Press and the Knight Ridder news wires, as is customary every night and was posted on The News’ web site. The story was immediately noticed by news organizations around the country.

Larry King was handed a copy of it while on the air with his CNN program.

ABC’s “Nightline” opened with Ted Koppel reading part of The News’ report.

About 30 minutes later, Mr. Koppel signed off by reading a White House statement that the report was false and malicious.

The Washington correspondent then read the story over the telephone to the source so he would know what the entire story included. The source said he was comfortable with the story.

Approximately 20 minutes later, however, the source said he had provided The News with incorrect information. This was despite having initiated the story, having participated in several conversations about it, having had the story read to him and confirming it only minutes before.

At this point, after discussions involving senior editors in Dallas and Washington, the story was pulled. It was clear that the truth could not be determined in the time that remained before deadlines for later editions. It was then after midnight in Washington.

In place of the story, The News published a front-page notice, saying that the source had disavowed the information he had provided.

On Tuesday, editors and reporters conducted a vigorous autopsy of The News’ procedures and attempted to determine what happened and why the source had reversed course. By mid day, the original source changed again, saying that some details he had provided were indeed correct, but that what he had described as a “compromising situation” should have been characterized as “ambiguous.”

This was, of course, a significant change from the previous day. It is unlikely that a story describing “ambiguous” behavior would have received national attention, let alone ended up on the front page of The News.

We held a meeting attended by more than 200 staffers to discuss what happened and to reaffirm the newspaper’s commitment to the source policy that has worked well over many years.

Everyone involved was deeply concerned about the damage to our credibility resulting from this unprecedented situation. The discussion was candid and intense.

The Dallas Morning News is recognized as one of America’s finest and most responsible newspapers. All of us are keenly aware every day that our basic mission is to provide to our readers fair and accurate reports. We know our credibility is vital to our relationship with our readers.

Without credibility, we have little to offer.

What happened last week should not have happened. Because of a misunderstanding at one point and a breach of our policy at another, we were left without the security of strong and independent confirming source. Such a situation has never happened here before, and we will see that it doesn’t happen again. We have rededicated ourselves to absolutely enforcing our own standards.

The Dallas Morning News, Feb. 1, 1998

Guide 10 --- A Missing Child

Use this scenario to discuss: Accuracy (Chapter III)

Ethics (Chapter IV)

Situation

In the following story, what should we report at each stage? Why? How should we report it? What journalistic and ethical considerations apply at each stage? When do we need to explain our paper’s decisions to readers? How would we do that?

TEACHING TIPS Work this scenario through one layer at a time. Ask workshop participants to identify competing values and to prioritize stakeholders at different stages.

• An 8-year-old girl disappeared this morning while walking to school in our community. The girl’s parents and police officials hold a late-afternoon news conference. They give reporters a photo of the girl and a description of a vehicle they think may be involved in her disappearance.
• On day two, the police give local media a description and an artist’s drawing of a suspect in the girl’s disappearance, which police confirm as a kidnapping.
• On day three, the missing girl’s family and her school classmates hold a prayer vigil at a local church. The girl’s mother makes an emotional plea on live television asking the kidnapper to “please let my little girl go free.” Family, friends and classmates are wearing buttons with the missing girl’s picture and name.
• On day four, the missing girl walks into the lobby of a bank in a local strip mall. She says she escaped from a man who forced her into his truck and took her away.
• On day five, the family of the girl holds a news conference at their home to thank everyone who helped search for her. The girl is present and, at the urging of her parents, describes how she escaped from the man who kidnapped her.
• On day seven, a suspect is arrested and charged with the kidnapping. One of your reporters learns that the suspect once worked with the girl’s father at a local bakery and got to know the girl when he visited their house.
• On day eight, the prosecutor charges the suspect with sexual assault of the girl.
• Back in the newsroom, there’s a heated argument about how to handle the story in tomorrow’s paper. One editor says, “We must stop identifying her now that she’s a victim of sexual assault. That’s a rule at our paper.” Another editor says, “The facts are the facts. We can’t withhold any details of the story, including her name. That would diminish the accuracy of the story.” One reporter says, “Why don’t we just say they’ve charged the suspect with assault and leave out the sexual part. That would protect her.” Another reporter says, “Ah, c’mon. Everybody knows her name and who she is. We’ve been showing her picture for a week. The cat’s out of the bag on this. We’ll look stupid if we stop identifying her. Besides, all the TV stations will most likely continue to use her name and photo."

Use this case to discuss: Accuracy (Chapter III)

Ethics (Chapter IV)

Situation

TEACHING TIPS Bring an expert on this issue to your training session — maybe a victim’s advocate who handles sexual assault cases or a psychologist who works with victims. Ask that person to listen to your discussion of the case and offer perspective on the quality and tone of your decision-making process.

In August 2000, an 8-year-old girl disappeared while walking home from school in Vallejo, Calif. Newspapers and other media heavily covered this story, identifying her by name and using her photo. Two days later, the girl escaped from her abductor and was reunited with her family.

The print and electronic media gave extensive coverage to that chapter of the story.

Two days later, the girl’s kidnapper was caught and charged with sexual assault.

Discussion questions

• How would our paper handle a discussion and decision on this issue?
• What ethics guidelines or protocols do we have in place to help us make a good decision?
• Who would be involved in the discussion and decision at our paper?
• Have we had similar cases? How well did we handle them? Journalistically? Ethically?
• San Francisco Chronicle Assistant Managing Editor Pamela Reasner wrote, “Every case is different. Even with ethics policies to guide our news judgment, we must treat people as individuals and do right by them.” What criteria can we apply in a case like this to honor that premise? How can we do right by a young girl? Should we give additional or different protection to a child in a situation like this?
• San Francisco Examiner columnist Stephanie Salter (“Brave girl now victim without a name”) argued against the decision the paper made in its news stories to start withholding her name once it was clear she was sexually assaulted. What about her argument? Does it carry weight?

MEDIA DEBATE USE OF VICTIM'S NAME

By Sandy Kleffman, Times staff writer

The kidnapping of an 8-year-old Vallejo girl prompted intense soul-searching in newsrooms throughout the Bay Area this week as journalists wrestled with questions about how to handle allegations of sexual assault.

Most news organizations have a standard policy not to reveal the name of sexual assault victims.

But in this case, the name of the girl and her photograph had been widely publicized as law enforcement officers sought the public’s help in finding her.

After her daring escape, local media ran heart-tugging shots of the girl being carried home by her father, eating ice cream on her way home from church, or jumping in playful abandon with friends.

But as it became clear that her abductor would be accused of sexual assault, journalists faced a dilemma: Should they reverse course and stop naming her or is that a ridiculous policy in light of the fact that her identity is already widely known?

“This is one of those situations where it’s really hard to divine right or wrong,” said Dick Rogers, metro editor of the San Francisco Examiner, apparently the first news organization to stop printing her name.

Reaching a similar conclusion were the Times and Associated Press. All three organizations had previously named the girl in stories referring to the likelihood of sexual assault charges.

The question prompted intense discussion in the Examiner newsroom, Rogers said.

“In kicking it back and forth again and again, we simply decided to take the prudent, conservative route,” Rogers said. “If there’s any likelihood that you could do further damage, you shouldn’t do it.”

Saundra Keyes, managing editor of the Contra Costa Times, agreed. “You don’t have a perfect choice here.”

Keyes said she and other Times editors initially felt “painted into a corner” by the fact that they had already identified her.

But Tuesday, after a court hearing at which charges were enumerated, Times editors decided to withhold her name in future stories and run no more photographs.

“We don’t have to be captives to the fact that the name is out there,” Keyes said.

“We choose to follow our existing policy, knowing that there is some awkwardness in that.”

The Associated Press also decided to withhold the girl’s name and is no longer transmitting her photograph. “This one was difficult because the name was out there,” said AP bureau chief Clay Haswell. “But my feeling was that you do the right thing as soon as you know what the situation is.”

Others, however, reached different conclusions.

The Vallejo Times-Herald, the girl’s hometown newspaper, is the only local news organization that has not disclosed the allegations of sexual assault. Instead, the paper revealed there are allegations of assault, without going into details, and provided information about the suspect’s criminal past, said editor Ted Vollmer.

They will continue to name the girl.

“She is well-known in this community,” Vollmer said. “How do you pretend it never happened? How do you unring the bell? Ordinarily in a case like this, we wouldn’t print the gory details anyway. It can be gratuitous.”

Vollmer said his paper fielded calls from residents upset about a front page, banner headline in the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday reading “Sex Assault Charges in Kidnapping.” The girl was named in the first sentence of the story.

“I know that headline drew a lot of anger from residents in Vallejo,” Vollmer said.

But Chronicle managing editor Jerry Roberts said he received only a handful of complaints. The paper debated whether to name the girl, but decided that because her identity was already widely known, it would have been useless not to name her. “As a practical matter, I don’t think it would have had any effect at that point,” Roberts said.

But when it comes to providing details about the sexual assault allegations, Roberts said, “We decided we wanted to do less rather than more in terms of graphic description about what happened.”

The San Jose Mercury News will also continue to run the girl’s name. “It’s something you can’t quite put back in the bag,” said Dawn Garcia, assistant managing editor of metro.

At KRON, Channel 4, the girl will still be named occasionally but her picture will not be shown, reporters will focus more on the suspect than her, and will not provide details about the sexual assault charges.

KRON reporters also won’t seek additional interviews with the girl’s family.

“As soon as the charges were discussed, I told all of my crews to leave the family alone,” said acting news director Stacy Owen. “The kid has been through hell.”

At KTVU, Channel 2, the girl will still be named occasionally “but cautiously and with restraint,” said associate news director Janice Gin. While talking about the assault allegations, she added, they will not show photographs of the girl.

Ben Bagdikian, former dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, said he believes her name should be withheld at this point.

“Otherwise, the time is going to come during the court hearing when the gory details are going to come out and that could be harmful to the girl,” he said. “The pictures, I think, would be particularly gratuitous.”

Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at The Poynter Institute, agreed.

“News organizations have appropriately protected victims of sexual assault,” Steele said. “(Experts) make logical arguments that if we identify victims, others who become victims may be less likely to file charges or seek help. They may fear they will be outed in the media.

“The reasons for identifying the child no longer outweigh the significant harm that can come to her by continuing to reveal her identity.”

Contra Costa Times, Aug. 17, 2000

PROTECTING A VICTIM'S IDENTITY

By Pamela Reasner, Assistant Managing Editor, Graphics

In the days after an 8-year-old girl was kidnapped in Vallejo on Aug. 10, The Chronicle ran comprehensive stories with large headlines and photographs about her disappearance. A newspaper such as ours has a role in publicizing the case of a missing child in those crucial early hours.

On Aug. 13, the dramatic tale of her escape and pictures of her return to the arms of her father made the front pages. Anxious Bay Area readers, with the uncertain fates of Amber, Michaela, Ilene and Xiana in their consciousness, rejoiced to know that this child, at least, was safe.

By Aug. 15, after charges of molestation surfaced, her name began to disappear from news accounts. Now she was a victim, not a missing child, and most newspapers’ ethics policies say something about not naming sexual assault victims.

The Chronicle’s ethics guidelines state: “We do not name victims of sexual assault unless the victim informs us he or she wants his or her name to be published. In general we do not name juvenile suspects in crime stories. We also are cautious about naming juvenile victims of a crime.’’

Guidelines are based upon the general case and rarely can anticipate the exact circumstances of each story.

In this case, the girl was a missing child first, and we had already published her name. Could we put the genie back in the bottle by no longer printing her name?

The reality, in this era of Web sites and Internet archives, is that it’s impossible to pretend you can undo something that’s “out there.’’ Even newspapers that decided as early as Aug. 15 to no longer publish the girl’s name still have her name and picture in their Web site archives.

We concluded that we could not undo the name association as the story unfolded continuously from kidnapping, to search, to escape, to reunion, to arrest, to charges, to arraignment. Although it was a departure from our policy, The Chronicle continued to run the girl’s name in the early part of the week. “As a practical matter, I don’t think it would have had any effect at that point (not to name her),’’ Managing Editor Jerry Roberts said then.

On Saturday, a week after her escape, we dropped her name from our stories. It’s unlikely she’ll be named in our pages from here on out, as the story focuses more on her alleged abductor, Curtis Dean Anderson, and the wheels of justice. The Chronicle will not run her name during trial coverage — after she has had a period of time to resume her life — so as not to “unfairly cast her back into the public discourse,’’ said Roberts.

The use of the girl’s name was just one of the gray areas surrounding this sensitive story discussed at length in The Chronicle newsroom: In what detail should we describe what happened to her? Should we continue to run her picture? How did her parents feel about the coverage — ours and that of other media?

We decided not to publish graphic details about the assault charges.

On August 14 we printed the photograph of her eating ice cream with her family after church to show readers that the spunky third-grader was getting on with her life. It would be the last photograph of her to appear in our daily coverage, and we purposely ran it inside the news section, rather than on the front page, to keep her face away from language about the charges. We also decided to keep her name out of headlines.

Roberts talked to the girl’s father about the coverage on August 16. He said therapists told him that the portrayal of his daughter as courageous and heroic was a positive thing and said he was not uncomfortable with The Chronicle’s coverage.

San Francisco Examiner columnist Stephanie Salter took exception to her paper’s decision to stop using the girl’s name. She wrote that “in the well-intentioned hope of protecting her from further abuse, we have made her sexual victimization the most important thing about her.’’ Her courage, heroism and will to survive became secondary.

In 1982, a 3-year-old named Tara Burke was kidnapped in Concord. For 10 months, her abductors kept her in a van and sexually abused her.

Fifteen years later and then in college, she agreed to be interviewed and photographed by Chronicle staffers Erin Hallissy and Lea Suzuki. As Assistant Managing Editor/Metro Linda Strean recalls, “She wanted her name and picture in the newspaper to show she had triumphed over her victimization.’’

Which may simply show that every case is different. Even with ethics policies to guide our news judgment, we must treat people as individuals and do right by them. …

San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 27, 2000

MEDIA FACE ETHICS QUESTION IN NAMING A CHILD RAPE VICTIM

Should the identity of sexually assaulted 8-year-old continue to be used in stories?

By Kathleen Sullivan, The San Francisco Examiner

When an 8-year-old kidnap victim was returned safely to her family in Vallejo last weekend, it was cause for relief and joy all over the Bay Area.

Those feelings were shared by reporters and editors long accustomed to writing stories about children who vanish without a trace.

But the news raised an ethical issue for the media after police revealed that the child had been sexually assaulted by her alleged abductor, Curtis Anderson. The child’s name had been widely publicized in the two days she was missing, but many news organizations have policies against naming people who have been sexually assaulted. Most do not identify children who are victims — or perpetrators — of a crime.

Should radio stations, newspapers and TV stations continue using her name in future stories? In recent days, that has been a hotly debated question in newsrooms.

Some newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, have continued publishing her name.

The Examiner stopped publishing the child’s name in Tuesday’s editions. Other news organization, including the Associated Press and the Contra Costa times, subsequently stopped using her name in stories as well.

Jerry Roberts, the Chronicle’s managing editor, said if the child had been a victim of sexual assault, the newspaper would not have named her. But the kidnapping changed the situation.

“We saw it as one continuous story — the kidnap, the search, the recovery, the obviously horrible allegations made against Anderson,” Roberts said. “Her name was already out there. As a practical matter, (naming her) wasn’t going to have an impact.”

Roberts said that decision could change when the newspaper covered Anderson’s trial. Naming the girl in the future, after the furor has died down, would “unfairly cast her back into the public discourse,” he said.

Dawn Garcia, the Mercury’s assistant managing editor for metro, said the newspaper didn’t usually name sexual crime victims. But in this case it will continue to name the girl.

“Unfortunately, the cat’s out of the bag,” Garcia said.

Janice Gin, associate news director at KTVU, Channel 2, said the station was using restraint and caution in reporting the story, but also planned to continue identifying the child.

“We are concerned about the juxtaposition of words and pictures,” Gin said. “When we’re talking about the crime, we’re showing the likeness of the suspect, not the child.”

Saundra Keyes, managing editor of the Contra Costa Times, which has decided against printing the girl’s name, said it was a “little awkward” to shift gears suddenly and stop identifying the child, since her name and picture had figured so prominently in earlier stories. But after weighing the alternatives, the newspaper decided it was time to stop identifying her.

“Either you say that it’s no use to adhere to our policy because the name is already out there, or you say ‘That’s our choice to make,’” Keyes said. “We decided that that’s our policy. And that it was the right thing to do.”

Sharon Rosenhause, The Examiner’s managing editor, said it was right to name the child when she was missing, and right to stop naming her when she was found and the accused kidnapper was charged with sexually assaulting her.

“We don’t want to be making someone a victim a second time — especially a child,” Rosenhause said.

When The Examiner asked the child’s father Wednesday about including his daughter’s name in a newspaper story that mentioned the sexual assault charge, he said: “We don’t want her name to be in it.”

Marcia Blackstock, executive director of Bay Area Women Against Rape, said a child who had been sexually assaulted needed privacy to heal, just as adult survivors did. Constant media attention will interfere with that process, she said.

“The media doesn’t need to keep linking her with 10 sexual assault charges, especially because she’s a child and doesn’t have the option or information she needs to judge whether she wanted her name out,” Blackstock said.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of Project for Excellence in Journalism at Columbia University, said he agreed with those who had decided to stop publishing the child’s name.

Journalists do not relinquish their responsibility to protect an innocent child simply because they published her name before the assault charges