911: Identification

Probably the hardest thing about this exercise for you was identification. You had competing interests at work here.

First, you should have been operating under the general journalistic premise that we do NOT name rape victims in almost all cases.

And on this point, this is where we did a bit worse than previous semesters when virtually no one did that. Here, three of you DID name the victim by name.

Earlier in this semester, we discussed when and when not to name victims in stories. In most cases we DO name victims, but a notable exception in American journalism regarded the names of rape victims.

In general, the current rule of thumb is that in weighing the benefit to society in knowing who exactly was victimized versus the harm that would come in terms of stigma to the victim, we do not name rape victims expect in rare circumstances, like a victim wanting to intentionally put a name and face to a victim to promote greater societal understanding, or a rape victim whose alleged attacker wasn't convicted in criminal court but who is facing a lawsuit for money in civil court.

This wasn't one of those times.

Then, there is the concern of making a virtual identification; that is, giving so much other information that it is easy for anybody to identify the victim.

Three of you named the victim's daughter. A daughter only has one mother, right? So that would be real easy to narrow down who the victim was if you gave the girl's name.

Also, one of you listed the exact home address where the crime took place. Only one family lives in a home, right? Again, you took a huge step in virtually identifying the victim.

Even though an exact address would expose the victim, don't readers still deserve to know where a crime took place? I mean, a story is much more relevant if it happened on your street or in your neighborhood than if it didn't. Some location is necessary to establish relevance.

A couple of you handled it in a smart way: you simply said the incident happened on Wilson Avenue. No street address included. That gave readers enough information to better set proximity, without giving away the victim's home and creating a virtual identification.

Now, what about the suspect's name? I think only under the rarest of cases would you not name the suspect. He's central to the story. As a society we need to know who among us is considered dangerous, and who among us is being locked up like a zoo animal by our authorities.

The only time in my whole journalism career when I didn't name a suspect was in a case around 1992 -- really early in my professional career -- where I was covering the trial of a teen accused of raping his own mother.

My editors went back-and-forth on how to handle it before deciding they wouldn't name the victim or the suspect, because naming the latter would identify the former. And there was a big ol' editor's note added ahead of my lede to explain their reasoning.

So exceptions are rare. Either the circumstances are amazingly twisted and unique or the suspects are juveniles and a particular media organization has rules about naming kids.

Again, this ain't one of 'em.

I also thought important to the story was noting that Caspinwall was a neighbor of the victim. Readers need to know if this crime was totally random or if there was some sort of link between the victim and attacker. Readers have more reason to worry if someone is willy-nilly breaking into random homes, as opposed to attacking a neighbor, right?

But only about half of you noted the link.

Note I say Caspinwall was a neighbor, not her direct neighbor. A neighbor -- or even better, a nearby neighbor -- could be somebody next door or down the street, right? So using neighbor in the generic doesn't necessarily narrow the possible victim pool to a single house or two.

Next, is the suspect's home address needed? I think some identification of where he lives is noteworthy. Wouldn't readers really want to know if an alleged rapist and home invader lived by them? Wouldn't you?

Also, there was something else that I think you owed the reader: an explanation of why you weren't naming the girl or listing her exact address.

Even though you're following journalistic rules, your readers probably don't know those rules and may simply be wondering, why the hell aren't there any names or exact addresses in this story? It wouldn't have hurt to have a simple background sentence somewhere in the story, like this:

The names of the girl and victim and the exact address where the crime occurred is being withheld to protect the identity of the victim.

That way, you are being transparent with readers about why they're not getting the level of information that other non-rape stories would include. A couple of you did do something along those lines.

Admittedly, this was a confusing exercise. You had many different factors tugging at you. It's really a tough situation for a young reporter to find himself or herself in. In a real-world setting, you'd definitely want to bring an editor in the loop to help make the best judgments that give the readers the most information while at the same time minimizing harm to the victim.

But here, I wanted to test your judgment and see how you responded. And I figured you'd appreciate the lesson much more if we did it this way, as opposed to just lecturing about it.

And in all fairness to you, how you handled these circumstances were a smaller-than-usual part of your assignment grade here. I gave you a break because I didn't want you to suffer a penalty on this one, but I did want you to have to think about it before we discussed it now.

Finally, this is how I would have handled it: I WOULD NOT name the victim or the girl. I WOULD name the suspect and even use HIS home address. I'd say the victim lived nearby, but I wouldn't specifically say they were direct neighbors.

That way, readers know who did this (and know exactly where the sicko lived) and the general area where the crime occurred and that it wasn't a random crime, while at the same time limiting the ability to identify who the victim was.

This is the sort of stuff you'll have to think about all the time in deciding what is the best way to tell your story.