Editorial

Naming names

Some readers may have been disappointed, last week, when a front page story didn’t include a certain person’s name.
‘Slave Lake man faces securities charges’, the headline read. After that, who wouldn’t be expecting to find out the guy’s name? It was in the Alberta Securities Commission release, but we didn’t use it. Here’s why:
Mr. X could be innocent of the charges. We’d rather not complicate his life and cast doubt on his reputation around town while the possibility of innocence exists.
As a lawyer friend once put it, the cops don’t always get it right. So we’d rather not print the name of an accused person, or suspect, until guilt has been established.
This hasn’t always been The Leader’s policy, and it could be regarded as futile in any case. Other news outlets receive the same releases we do, and if the name of the accused is in it, they often publish or broadcast it. So if the name of the accused runs on several local radio news broadcasts during the week, why should The Leader be shy about printing the name next Tuesday? Well, a policy is a policy. If somebody turns out to be innocent of the misbehaviour they’re accused of, they shouldn’t have to suffer a damaged reputation.
Some people will claim we do more than enough damage to reputations by covering the proceedings of the provincial court. It is true that sometimes the court also gets things wrong, and in reporting what goes on there, we compound those mistakes.
Yet the alternative – to ignore findings or pleas of guilt in crimes – is to pretend they don’t exist. For one thing, it doesn’t do justice to the victims, who in many cases would want the public to know what happened to the perpetrators. There is also a general deterrent effect (we hope) of reporting convictions in the paper. People who care about their reputation (admittedly not everyone) may think twice about driving while drunk if it could mean their name will appear in bold in the court report.
The system is not perfect. But we believe there is a compelling case in favour of reporting the names of those convicted and the details of those cases, as they are presented in court.
Not so with mere accusations. The details, yes, but not the names.
Such reticence would probably be regarded as pathetic in the competitive context of ‘big city’ journalism, where sensation sells papers. But that doesn’t work in a small community, as far as we’re concerned.
Applying such an ethic across the spectrum of reporting is a tricky business. Some readers (and perhaps advertisers) would prefer that nothing unpleasant ever sully the pages of the local paper. And it is difficult to know sometimes how far to go, or what emphasis to take on any particular story or incident. Some weekly papers avoid unpleasantness to the point that they are deadly boring. Others, obviously, revel in sensation and controversy.
We’re working for some middle position, andt does not include (except perhaps in extraordinary cases) publishing the names of accused persons before they are convicted.