The Scottsbluff, Nebraska Star-Herald announced a new policy in an editorial of delaying reporting the names in fatal accidents for 24 hours.
The editors are concerned that extended family members, such as aunts, uncles and grandparents, might find out first through the paper or the paper’s website about a death rather than from their family. The paper writes:
In the past we have released the names of those killed in an accident as soon as law enforcement released those names. As a media outlet we have wanted to get the news to our readers, both in print and online, as quickly as possible.
Sometimes in the past, the names have been reported so quickly that family members dealing with a horrible loss have not had time to contact grandparents, siblings and important aunts and uncles. For that, we are sorry.
We as a media outlet have not done anything wrong by releasing names.
Law enforcement’s responsibility is to inform the immediate family. This includes mother, father, husband or wife. It does not include grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles.
Once law enforcement releases those names, we in the media can rightfully publish them.
In some cases the names of those who lost their lives could be released and put out through the media before close relatives are notified. In a worse case scenario, a grandparent could find out about the death of their grandchild through the media before being contacted by the child’s parents.
We do not want this to happen and we are going to make a change in when we report names of those lost in an accident.
Instead of releasing names as soon as we get them, we will wait for 24 hours before publishing those names in print and online.
I certainly understand why the newspaper would consider taking this stand, and I cannot argue with their concern about compassion. And at one point in my career I might even have agreed with them.
In fact, I did.
I was editing the Saturday morning paper in a small town in Iowa when I was two or three years out of journalism school. The managing editor was out of town, so I was in charge for the night.
A small plane crashed at the little local airport, killing the pilot. Law enforcement would not release the name of the victim because they had not been able to notify the next of kin yet. Our photographer had authoritatively gotten the name of the deceased from the airport manager, so I had to decide what we should do:
- Should we run the name so our readers would have an authoritative report on who had died?
- If we ran the name, there was a chance that the family would find out about the death through the paper the next morning.
- If we didn’t run the name, many people would be left worried about whether a pilot they knew was the victim.
- If we didn’t run the name, many people in town would still know through the rumor mill. It’s also possible incorrect rumors would spread.
In the end, I didn’t publish the name for compassionate reasons. When my boss got back on Monday, he let me know in no uncertain terms that I had screwed up by not printing the name. He pointed out that we were a newspaper and that it was our job to publish news and to publish it as quickly as we could.
As it turned out, the pilot had been on his way to a fishing camp in Canada where he was joining his family who were already there. His family didn’t end up finding out about his death for two weeks, regardless of what I had done.
When I look back now, I realize I really had made a mistake. It is possible that I could have hurt a family member by printing the name. But in all honesty, I don’t know that the pain for them was any less hearing it from a police officer instead of from the paper. And I’m not at all convinced that in a small town I really protected anyone by not printing it. I suspect many people knew by the next morning who had died.
Ultimately, my boss was right. It was my job to print the news. There are certainly times where discretion in naming victims is required. But I’m not sure that a blanket policy of holding back on publicly released information for 24 hours serves anyone’s best interests.
What would you do in this situation? And are you sure that your decision would be the right one?
Next: Readers respond.