Minn. News Council, Weekly Publisher Split Over 'Unfair' Rape Coverage

By: Mark Fitzgerald Who's unfair? The small-town Minnesota weekly that ignored a letter to the editor from a rape suspect who later pleaded guilty -- or the Minnesota News Council that determined by a 15-7 vote last Friday that the paper's coverage of the rape case was "unfair ... even though its stories contained no inaccuracies?"

Executive Director Gary Gilson said the case brought against the 6,000-circulation Wright County Journal-Press in Buffalo, Minn., by an advocacy group involved issues common to small papers everywhere, such as how to handle controversial stories with limited staff and resources.

"I think a lot of papers that have meager resources are going to feel uncomfortable with this," said Gilson, noting that he is not a member of the council, which is divided equally between 12 people from news organizations and 12 from the public at large. But he said the case raised the issue of whether a small paper is justified in not looking into important crime cases. "The editor told news council members that he didn't look at the police report, that he didn't go to the pre-trial hearing," Gilson said. But council members said the case seemed to be big enough for full coverage. "One asked, how many rape cases do they have in Buffalo, Minn.?" according to Gilson.

At issue was coverage of rape charges against William Bell, then 20, a Chicago native living in St. Paul who was visiting a girlfriend in Buffalo at the time of the crime. Before eventually pleading guilty, he wrote a letter to the editor and had telephoned the Journal-Press about his case. The complaint to the news council was made by Marjory Aldrich of the Center for Victims of Professional Abuse, who said Bell wanted, among other things, to rebut news articles about the case.

At the hearing, several council members criticized the paper for relying only on police and prosecutors as story sources, and suggested that the weekly should have done more investigative work on the case. Media members of the news council mostly sided against the Journal-Press, Gilson said. Of the seven members who sided with the paper, just four were media members.

For his part, Journal-Press Publisher and Editor James P. McDonnell Jr. said the news council had strayed far afield of the actual complaint from Aldrich, which asked whether prisoners had an "ethical right" to publication of letters to the editor criticizing coverage of their case.

"The news council never precisely answered her questions," McDonnell said. "Instead, it went into a discussion about who are your sources, where do small weekly newspapers get their information, and how does this newspaper report on crime? ... Basically our sources are the same as 99% of all weeklies, and I would guess daily newspapers: police and prosecutors and sheriff's deputies."

McDonnell said Wright County authorities prosecute more than 500 serious felony crimes each year. The family-owned paper -- with a news staff of two full-time employees and one part-timer, not counting the single sports reporter -- cannot be expected to investigate more than 10 crimes every week, he said.

"We felt (the hearing) became kind of a fishing expedition," said McDonnell, who represented the paper at the hearing. "The issue of does a weekly, does the Journal-Press do a good job covering (crime) was beyond the purview of the (council) and beyond the purview of the specific complaint. We also thought there was a condescending tone from the members."

According to the news release issued about the determination, some members were quite critical of the newspaper.

For instance, Gwenyth Jones Spitz, a retired Minneapolis reporter who said she had published country papers, said the paper had a duty on this "big story" to contact all sides. "This was worth your time and effort," she was quoted as saying, "And you can't say you're not going to call the defense attorney just because other attorneys have refused to talk to you."

At the hearing, and in a phone interview with E&P, McDonnell said public defenders do not want their clients talking to newspapers. He noted Bell's public defender did not participate in the hearing, and said Aldrich told the hearing that the public defender would not let her see the prisoner. That's why he did not publish Bell's letter to the editor, McDonnell added: "First, every newspaper has a perfect right to refuse to publish any letter to the editor, but a prisoner writing a letter -- in terms of the Miranda (warning) that anything he says can be used against him in court -- is about to step into a legal minefield." The paper's policy is not to print letters by prisoners discussing their cases, he said.

During the hearing, Aldrich noted that in another case, involving a prominent resident accused of possessing child pornography, the newspaper indicated in an article that it had tried unsuccessfully to contact the suspect. A news council release quoted a public member, educator Rachel Quenemoen, as saying she was "horrified at the disparity in the treatment" the paper gave this suspect and Bell.

Founded in 1971, the Minnesota News Council is among the oldest and one of the few news councils in the U.S. In addition to hearing complaints about news coverage, it conducts forums and other educational outreach program about fairness in news coverage.