Teacher’s story became news when district acted
When to publish a story during an ongoing police investigation can be one of the toughest decisions facing a news operation.
Such is the case with a story in Wednesday’s Monroe Evening News and on Monroenews.com about a Monroe High School teacher who is under investigation for inappropriate behavior with a student.
The story is receiving dozens of comments from readers on Monroenews.com, some of whom are critical of The Evening News for publishing the story when the teacher has not been charged with a crime.
They correctly point out that our policy is generally to wait until charges have been filed against someone before reporting their name.
We’ve known about the investigation for months. We know about lots of police investigations that never reach the point of a story in the newspaper. If the police decide there is nothing to an accusation, there’s no reason for a story.
Even when a suspect is arrested, we generally don’t name them until they’ve been to court and been arraigned, or until a prosecutor has signed a warrant.
Two things made this case different.
One, the suspect is in a position of public trust. This isn’t a private person - it’s a teacher, someone we’ve entrusted with childrens’ lives. There is a higher public interest in the case.
And, two, the case reached a point where concrete action was taken. The school district put the teacher on paid administrative leave. She was no longer teaching her classes. The case became public, in a sense, because of the district’s action.
From a practical standpoint, that meant that rumors began to fly even faster at the high school. If the local newspaper continued to ignore it, the rumors would just get wilder and wilder.
Ray Kisonas, the reporter who wrote the story, had to sort through a variety of allegations. The phone was ringing in the newsroom as plenty of people offered their suggestions.
The story that appeared in the paper was short, straightforward, giving accurate information. The teacher wasn’t led out of the school in handcuffs by armed police officers. The allegations had nothing to do with the earlier controversy involving volleyball players.
Other commenters on Monroenews.com wondered why the volleyball controversy was brought up at all. If they weren’t connected, why mention it?
In my view, The Evening News showed considerable restraint in not publishing a story about the accusations last winter, when parents of JV players accused the head coach of abusive behavior and favoritism. We checked with school officials, who said the complaints were typical of parents who are upset with a coach. It’s not uncommon in youth sports, so we ignored it.
Ironically, the topic was covered on MonroeTalks.com, our social networking site. That’s different. The whole point of MonroeTalks.com is to give Monroe County residents a place to bring up any issue they want to talk about, and coaching of high school sports is a likely topic for conversation.
So, because of the MonroeTalks.com discussion, as well as the high school rumor mill, most people in the high school community were aware of the volleyball controversy. One of the first rumors to get started was that there was a connection between the two situations.
If Ray had left the volleyball controversy out of this week’s story, he would have done readers a disservice. It was important to include the information that they apparently are not connected.
I agree with those “posters” on Monroenews.com that if the teacher turns out to be innocent of the accusations, the story in the paper will have unfairly tarred her reputation. I think that’s very unfortunate.
But we wouldn’t have done her a favor by hiding the facts from the public, letting the rumor mill sweep through town unabated.
When the school district decided the situation was serious enough to take the teacher out of the classroom, we had to do our job and provide as many accurate details as we could.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
This is all bull crap! You should have never ever put this in the news paper and better yet FRONT PAGE!
Monroe News should feel terrible about this situation!
June 11th, 2008 at 12:35 am
The problem with your thought process, in my opinion, is that you think rumors are such a bad thing. Rumors are, by definition, unverified. And while the newspaper story doesn’t verify the rumor, it does lend some validity to the accusations.
What’s worse - whispered rumors or rumors printed in a supposedly official forum?
The fact is, no legal action has been taken. But whether or not these allegations turn out to be true, the teacher’s reputation is ruined. If - and let me stress the use of the word “if” - these allegations turn out to be untrue, the Monroe Evening News won’t be there to pick up the pieces. You won’t pay for the marriage counseling or the divorce court fees. You won’t help her relocate or find a new job if she decides to move because of the embarrassment.
If you knew about the investigation for months and you were able to keep it relatively quiet, you could have kept sitting on it until you had some actual evidence. An internal investigation does not require you to report it as news.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:29 am
This “public trust” concept is quite a sweeping standard. Does it apply to day-care providers or tot-lot leaders? How about unsubstantiated rumors about elected officials, county prosecutors and local firefighters? How about the refuse removal crews at city parks? They are paid by the public and work around kids.
As a teacher, I certainly understand the public dimension of the profession. And I think that most teachers fill the role in an excellent manner. Car insurance companies and condo rental places certainly wouldn’t give “teacher discounts” if most didn’t live fairly immaculate lives.
But for a starting salary of $30K per year, it seems fairly onerus to have to sign away one’s right to due process.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:45 am
The challenge for a community newspaper is sometimes, in a case like this, to determine whether the truth - as far as we know it - reported in the newspaper, is better than letting rumors go unabated.
As long as no action was taken, the rumors were relatively mild - the same kind that go around every high school.
But when the school district took action - removed the teacher from the classroom - without any public explanation, the rumors took off. They were much worse than the reality. And a much wider group of people heard them, including virtually everyone in the school community.
A story in the newspaper that sets the record straight - as far as it is known - seems like the better solution. It isn’t doing anything to due process. The judicial system and the school personnel process are still at work.
Yes, I know that a teacher’s reputation is done permanent damage by a case like this. But I would argue that the damage was done already, irregardless of whether it was reported in the newspaper.
And if no charges are filed and the teacher is returned to her classroom job next fall, we’ll certainly report that as prominently as we reported the initial story. That’s all we can do.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Dan!
I think that you guys made a decent choice. It was, in fact, news that the teacher was placed on leave. I’m not sure that the reasons for the leave were news without a charge. But you did have the sheriff’s office and prosecutor on record. Did they break any ethical standards in speaking about the accusations in the case on the record without a charge?
I don’t think that the volleyball arguments had any place in the story. That kind of thing is common and not news.
I do find the line between rumor and “news” in our society to be fascinating.
How many times have we seen political candidates with a potential skeleton? It’ll be on drudgereport and on the blogs. The hard-core news junkies will know about it. But most people will not know about it. And the story often dies right there. It won’t be a true scandal until it’s substantiated and in an actual, credible newspaper.
Sometimes, I’ll watch a little-reported story bounce around for a few months and then it’ll become a scandal once it leaps into the legitimate papers.
I don’t think the fact that a rumor is circulating or “everybody knows” is a sufficient argument to publish.
And, sometimes, the papers do a little weasel maneuver by reporting that “some media sources are reporting…” That is irresponsible without supporting evidence.
It is so easy these days to start a rumor. And the role of a newspaper is to substantiate facts and print those facts. I think that newspapers will die if they do the same thing as blogs and internet forums. It is their essential fairness and high standards that make the papers important going forward. They are the “honest brokers” in our public discourse.
Papers need to generate high quality news or they are just like everything else. They are selling integrity, fairness and editorial review these days.
I would take issue with the idea that this teacher’s due process rights aren’t damaged. During the past two or three months, we saw commercial after commercial for Geoffrey Feiger’s law firm. It wasn’t because he wanted more business for his firm. It was because Feiger knew that he could impact the public discussion - and his jury - through the media. All he needed was one juror to back him and he’d beat the charge. Now, I don’t know if the media impacted this particular jury, but Feiger certainly tried.
And we see that all the time. The media and due process go hand in hand.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Very good points, Mike. I couldn’t disagree with any of them.
Okay, maybe a few.
For example, I gave the volleyball issue a lot of thought and still concluded that it needed to be included in the story. It’s one of those things where the absence would be confusing. “Is this the same teacher who was at the center of the volleyball coaching controversy,” would be on the minds of many people.
Without the information, some of the appropriate context is missing. The writer took care to make it clear that the two issues were not connected. But to leave it out would beg the question.
And I don’t think your Feager example is relevant. The point is that justice is a very difficult goal to reach. Juries are sometimes wrong. In a few cases, such as O.J. or Michael Jackson, the ability to hire a panel of world-class lawyers may be one reason. But sometimes it’s just because one attorney was better than another, or one witness more compelling than another.
Sure, publicity makes the court’s job more difficult. They have to find jurors who won’t be influenced by what they’ve read in the newspaper or watched on televison. But I think it can be done, and that we have to trust our judicial system to find a way to give each person a fair trial.
Otherwise, I agree with you 100 percent. Watching stories bounce through the Internet, waiting to see if they reach the traditional media, can be a fascinating process.
And I agree that our best hope for the future is retaining our credibility. In the confusing maze that is the Internet, it’s important to have places to look for news that you can trust.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
“Very good points, Mike. I couldn’t disagree with any of them.
Okay, maybe a few.”
I love it.
Hey, Dan, thanks for responding to my long-winded posts. You guys do an excellent job overall. And you are wonderful at being open to criticism. Wonderful work.