SEATTLE MEDIA TOO COOPERATIVE WITH POLICE

By: Allan Wolper Our Columnist Says Surrender Of Photos Unnecessary


Call them the Seattle deputy news sheriffs.

They are the TV stations and newspapers that caved in to police
demands for news-video outtakes and unpublished photos of the
Feb. 27 Mardi Gras riot in the city's historical Pioneer Square
district. Their surrender to the police force was unnecessary.

The cops had their own cameras focused on the 4,000 revelers and
were given dozens of videos by people who witnessed the carnage
that injured 70 people and left a 20-year-old man dead.

The trend these days is for news outlets, in the name of civic
journalism, to give law-enforcement officials anything they ask
for without thinking about the long-range damage they are doing
to their credibility or the constitutional well-being of the
people they serve.

The Seattle cops were on a fishing expedition when they went
after the news products of The Seattle Times, the Post-
Intelligencer, and the area's TV stations. That is routine
behavior in countries where there is no free press to keep
governments in check. Those regimes are always confiscating
presses or taking over TV stations. Giving up unpublished
material is the same as turning over the presses to the police.

Before newspeople began identifying themselves as civic
journalists, TV stations would recycle their outtakes and
newspapers would hide or destroy their unpublished photos rather
than give them to the cops. But that was when the prevailing
wisdom was that reporters should not become undercover
operatives.

Except in Seattle.

"The media were all very cooperative," said Gary Nelson, a member
of the Mardi Gras police task force formed after the riot.
"Everyone was so appalled by what happened that they didn't hold
anything back. We were able to identify 71 people from the tapes
and take 41 of them into custody."

The Seattle Times won the award for Most Cooperative
Newspaper. The Times agreed to post on its Web site the
photos of 28 Mardi Gras celebrants the cops thought might have
committed crimes. Then the paper culled its picture files for
suspects, eventually adding a dozen more people to its Internet
list. "It was a way to cooperate without opening ourselves to
charges that we were favoring either the prosecutors or the
defense attorneys," said Michael R. Fancher, executive editor of
the Times.

Fancher also thought he might lose in court if he resisted. He
might have changed his mind had he read the 1995 files of his own
newspaper.

Stacy Burns, then the editor of the Mountlake Terrace High School
newspaper in suburban Seattle, risked jail to hold onto photos of
a school brawl. The newspaper adviser hid the pictures, the cops
eventually left, and Stacy went to college.

But adults have a more mature agenda.

"With the advent of the Internet, newsrooms are taking their
unpublished photos and posting them on their Web sites," said
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for
Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Va. "Every time they do that,
I roll my eyes."

The Post-Intelligencer gave up its photos without a
whimper.

"We had pictures showing that real crimes were being committed,
so we made them available to police investigators," said Kenneth
F. Bunting, executive editor of the newspaper. "We are citizens
of the community. I don't think any journalism principles were
involved."

The TV stations were more creative in their complicity.

KIRO-TV, owned by Cox Enterprises Inc., broadcast all its Mardi
Gras footage on its overnight news shows so the cops could tape
it. "We used hours of tape," said Marsha Stewart, an assignment
editor.

KOMO-TV, a Fisher Communications Inc. station, broadcast 45
seconds of selected footage in slow motion. "We stayed on people
for two or three seconds so police could identify suspects," said
Joe Barnes, vice president and news director. "I can go home and
look at myself in the mirror and know I did the right thing."

Todd Mokhtari, news director of KCPQ-TV, a Tribune Co. property,
ran hours of uncut footage of the riot on his overnight
broadcasts. "We had the murder suspect on tape punching the guy
who died," said Mokhtari. "It was pretty horrific."

All this volunteerism hasn't satisfied the cops. They have
subpoenaed the stations and want their executives to testify
about what was on their tapes. Even worse, police officials say
that defense attorneys want the news photographers to testify
about what they witnessed before and after they shot their
pictures.

There are good reasons for that. It is sometimes impossible to
tell if someone captured on video is defending himself, shielding
someone else, or guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong
time.

There is no doubt the police used the videos to track down some
crazed celebrants. But it would be criminal if a single person is
victimized by misleading images the media made available to the
cops.



Allan Wolper's "Ethics Corner" column appears monthly in E&P.
He can be reached at alfyjournal@msn.com.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.