►Journalists should consider individuals’ long-term reputations when publishing stories of their suspected crimes, and the decision to name the person depends on the nature of the story, Sylvia Stead wrote for the Online News Association.
Source: https://ethics.journalists.org/topics/naming-criminal-suspects
►Covering suspects of crime, before or after an arrest, brings ethical and legal concerns. Coverage of the late Richard Jewell, who many news organizations named as a “person of interest” in the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, offers a tragic trial-by-media example. Several news organizations paid for defamation by implication of Jewell, while others did not. (Note: The 2019 movie, which is quite critical of journalistic inaccuracies, took its liberties with the truth of what happened.)
Sources:
- https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/suspect_9781419734625
- http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=4042
- https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/1fd2d7ae-10d8-474b-9bf1-d1558af697be
- https://ethics.journalists.org/topics/naming-criminal-suspects/
- https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/richard-jewell/
►The Columbia Journalism Review’s Jonathan Peters asserted the trial of Timothy McVeigh for bombing a federal building in Oklahoma in 1995 taught media many lessons on covering criminal trials. Attending media updated their readers of the trial’s proceedings on the Internet, and the aftermath led to a renewed dedication to factual reporting in an emotionally charged environment.
Source: https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/mcveigh_trial_media_legacy.php
► News 5 Cleveland publishes descriptions of criminal suspects after considering “the importance of a piece of information first.” The station acknowledges its role in promoting public safety, but does not report police scanner traffic “because relying only on those initial reports increases the likelihood that the story will be incomplete.”