Not So Black and White

The Arkansas-Democrat Gazette uses racial information in its crime reporting. According to managing editor Frank Fellone, the newspaper has used race in its "Police Beat" column "for years and years." The newsroom standard, according to Fellone, is "to use all available information provided by the police."

That's at odds with the conventions of many other news outlets, which avoid racial or ethnic identifiers unless they're important or, in some cases, if victims provide detailed descriptions. Newsrooms apply a standard test, according to a 2008 article from the Society of Professional Journalists: "[Is] the racial information useful to people in the community who might know the attacker or want to avoid harm themselves? Or [is] it so general that it only merely contribute[s] to stereotypes about one group or another?"