There’s been a lot of discussion in journalism circles of late regarding the use of race as an identifier in crimes stories and briefs. For example, if there was a robbery at the convenience store and the clerk’s description is that the robber was about 6 feet tall and black, is that relevant information for a story. Journal policy has tended to say that isn’t. The reasoning being that the idea behind publishing descriptions of suspects is to give people information that will keep them safe or assist the police in arresting a suspect. A description that has only race and height isn’t specific enough to be of help, but instead just fans racial stereotypes.
This past Friday we wrote about a reported rape in a neighborhood off Country Club Road. We didn’t include the description of the attacker, because it was fairly limited.
Here’s some correspondence we received:
I live near Huntcliff and my son has friends who live there so I heard about the assault yesterday. What I heard was that it was a black male who assaulted the woman. In fact the news last night reported that. Your article, however, makes no mention of this. I find this disturbing in that some people will only read your article and not have knowledge of this very pertinent fact. It is impossible for one to identify someone based on their frame and clothes alone without knowing their race. If it were white man, I would certainly want to know. This is not a racial matter by any means. This is a fact and it is your job to report the facts to the public without fear of being considered racist. Please do so in the future.
Here’s the response sent from one of our editors:
It is the Journal’s policy that we only reveal race, black or white, if there is a specific enough description of a suspect that we feel it will be useful to help catch a person. Typically, this means we would like to see some physical description, clothing description, etc.
If the only description is so vague as it could be just about anyone, then including the race doesn’t do anything except get people’s emotions roiled up, again, whether black or white.
Of course, this is a judgment call on the part of the newspaper each time an incident occurs, but over years of practice, newspapers including the Journal have found it to be a good practice. In this specific case, the description of the suspect did not include enough detail that we believed the inclusion of race ... was warranted. Some, as you do, may disagree, and we will consider this as we do followups.
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Many newspapers have policies similar to ours, but like all policies they are constantly getting tweaked and reevaluated. Here’s what the News & Observer in Raleigh is doing. I’ll be interested to see how it works in practice.
I’m also interested in your thoughts on this issue.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
In this city and in this time, where shades of color cross the race spectrum and many people are bi(or more)racial, I distrust reported race anyway.
A prime example: the young teenage boy in Cherokee for whom an Amber Alert was issued a day or so ago. Reported race: American Indian. If I read that and didn’t see the accompanying photo, I would have looked for dark hair, brown eyes. I would have walked straight past the seemingly white child with sandy hair and green eyes.
I’ve met too many Latinos with dark skin and too many African Americans with quite light skin to trust racial descriptions anyway. They’re guesses at best, and in cases like this, they are made by people under extreme stress.
How can mentioning race not be more specific than not mentioning race? Is it any less specific than mentioning gender? According to the US Census webpage for Winston-Salem 47% of residents are male and 37% are black. If you identify the attacker as a black male you’ve whittled down the list to roughly 37% of 47% or 36,500 people out of Winston’s 210,000 residents. Even if the suspect is a white male you’d have 55% of 47%, or 54,250. If the suspect was Asian? 1.1% of 47% or 987 people. If Hispanic? 8.6% of 47% or 8,600 people.
Simply put I don’t think the paper’s argument holds water. If you think that the risk of bruising a constituency’s feelings outweighs the import of the accuracy of the description then that is your choice, but saying that you need more specific criteria before mentioning the race is no more logical than saying you won’t mention it’s a man until you know what color his eyes are, whether or not he has a mustache, etc.
Also, just a personal opinion here, but if the suspect had been Hispanic or Asian I think the paper’s hesitancy would have been much less. Smaller constituency, less noise, less thought. In my eyes the paper’s decision reflects basic human nature, but I think it’s illogical. If all the information you’ve been provided is gender and race then report it. When greater details become available report that too. But don’t let fear of a few bruised feelings get in the way of reporting what you know.
You all have found both sides of the argument and summarized them well.
I think one of the things that gets lost is that newspapers aren’t just a water main, a pipe that moves information from one point to another. We filter and we sort, making decisions on information that we think is important or relevant. There are many things we know that don’t get reported in all sorts of stories.
Again, thanks for the sharp comments.
It seems to me the benefits of potentially increasing the probability that a criminal will be apprehended far outweigh whatever unpleasantness may result in the form of “roiled up emotions”.
My mother in law was disturbed when the law left a phone message recording leaving select citizens in this quadrant data on race, age, and other info. I was concerned she was shook up, curtailing walks and had to rely on a high tech software calling system like the ones used by schools on snow days and not in the paper. I learned more from my son’s skateboard buddies than in the press.while covering the watauga county sheriffs dept.in the 80s sheriff ward carroll told me the reason a rape wasn’t reported to the public was because it would git the wimmen all riled up. He may have been right.maybe the press regards this crime as less heinous than murder. In sc the same standards are expected by radio as newspapers with the instant news junkies like when stephen stanko was loose for rape and murder finally on 48 hours on cbs. An african american suspect was in backyards in horry county too and a talk radio show covered it letting citizens know his race live. He was caught in a shed.
I don’t think we have a different standard for rape vs. murder or armed robbery. I don’t know enough about the Horry County situation, but I’m hard pressed to recall any incidents in Forsyth County or our environs where a suspect was caught because of physical descriptions published or broadcast. License plate nos. and bank photos, absolutely.
i love your blog. it’s so much better than the greensboro record one. the journal looks great, fine pics and super layout.
there is a different standard for rape versus murder in the press. rape, unfortunately, is seen by the male-dominated newsrooms across america as a crime of passion instead of primarily a violent crime. When one inhabits newsrooms, one hears the graveyard humor which infiltrates blogs. “Sexual assault” is how it is termed instead of “rape.”
my daddy, who played for wfu with clyde parrish in the first gator bowl, told me journalists aren’t cops.
Guys don’t sweat rape alerts, do they?
“She probably deserved it, dressing that way.” Ever hear that one?
The “Curb Your Enthusiam” episode recently depicted how snarled things become when just communicating something racially insensitive. In the Stanko case he was on the run in Horry County, and we were collectively scared as hell as a community because he raped a 15-year-old female and offed her mother, being caught via a tip from an employee of The State who worked as a bartender in Columbia, netting the arrest in a Georgia parking lot.
As newspapers in South Carolina vie for FOI awards with mass requests, costing taxpayers bucks and getting cops paranoid to the point of harassing journalists making the requests, the point is catching the bad guys. they aren’t always of color. back in my home state only a few mohths, and they send a guy with a 70 I.Q. to prison, whew. go figure.
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