Ethical Issues Involved in the Investigation and Reporting of a Crime
According to a study done by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in 2006, 48 percent of all local television news is crime reporting. Journalists who report on crimes must walk the line between giving the public the information they need and creating problems in police investigations, violating the public trust and doing further harm to victims.
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Confidentiality Issues
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Freedom of the press is an important part of American culture that's protected by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Part of what makes American journalism strong is the ability to honor the confidentiality of informants. The privilege of confidentiality is not absolute, and under some circumstances the courts may order a journalist to reveal the source of her information. A journalist in that position may have to choose between being held in contempt of court or giving up a source.
Copycat Crimes
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A journalist may have to make a choice between full reporting of a crime and risking someone copying the original crime, or withholding some information from the public. In May 1999, "Time" reported on young people copying the actions of the young men involved in the Columbine school shooting case. There's no legal limitation on what the journalist may report, but there may be ethical guidelines.
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Victim Privacy
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Seeing a crying victim on television or on the front page of a newspaper creates an emotional response in the viewer and brings in viewers or sells papers, but a journalist faces the ethical decision of where to draw the line. The Criminal Justice Journalists reported that 75 percent of women polled indicated that a woman would be less likely to report a rape if her name would be reported. Many newspapers and media sources now have guidelines prohibiting the reporting of victim's names for this reason.
False Conclusions
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A journalist has an ethical duty to report facts, not interpret the news. When journalists draw conclusions that may or may not be supported by the facts, they can do grave harm. Consider the example discussed in "The Ethics" of reporting on a scene where police tell the journalist a man died as a result of a fall from a building. The journalist cannot report that the man fell, or was pushed, even if the journalist knows the police are treating the death as suspicious, until the facts are known.
Interference in Police Investigations
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In some cases a journalist may discover information about a police investigation into a crime that would benefit the crime perpetrator if released. An example might be a journalist learning the name of a person of interest in a police investigation. If the information were immediately reported, a criminal could get information he needed to elude capture. Media sources have self-imposed ethical guidelines to assist journalists in making the reporting decision.
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References
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