I noted the other day the running commentary on our Web site about the racial descriptions used (or not used) in stories about crime. A couple of folks have asked me to write about how and when the Journal decides to use race as a descriptor. I won’t call this a rule, because rules tend to imply a yes-no approach to something. I’ll call these guidelines.
Essentially, it is this. We use race when it is relevant to the story or helpful in the capturing of a suspect.
Imagine this description of a robber at a convenience store: Police are looking for a black man in his 20s. Or this one: The robber was described as a heavy-set white woman. As the detectives in Law & Order might say, that ain’t a lot to go on. As you add more details, height, weight, clothing, etc., a fuller description emerges: Witnesses said the driver was a white man in his 20s with a beard and was wearing overalls and an Atlanta Braves ballcap.
But even if those barebones description aren’t helpful to the police, are they relevant to people’s understanding of the event? Some people suggest that when we leave race out of descriptions, we are doing it to cover up the extent that crimes are committed by members of one race or another. I don’t think we are. It’s just that the race doesn’t in our opinion appear to be relevant to the crime. When instances occur where members of one race appear to be targeting victims based on their race, then those caveats might be reexamined.
You’ll notice before that I said “guidelines.” One reason for that disclaimer is this: Different editors sometimes have different benchmarks on when a threshold has been reached to use a racial descriptor. We’ve erred in the past on using race when she shouldn’t have, and also in not using it when we could have. We learn from each episode.
Followup: Some time back, I told you about a great read by Gene Weingarten, on an experiment at a Metro train station in D.C. Here’s a followup. It is proof positive of the old journalistic adage, There are no new stories, just new reporters.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
As the Democratic presidential primary has shown, race is still a big, sensitive subject in these United States. I think either way—if you report on the person’s race or leave it out—people will project their fears, biases, etc on the story. And it doesn’t even have to be a crime story.
At the paper I work at, we have a public service ad that shows the pictures of the top criminals the county police are looking for. When the top four wanted were white, we got complaints. When the top four were black, we got complaints.
But when the top four had two Latinos, no one said anything.
Sometimes, I really hate the South.
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