Search the ArchivesNavigation Contact InformationThe Citizen Newspapers For Advertising Information Email us your news! For technical difficulties |
To print undercover deputy’s wife’s name is wrong There are a million pieces of news out there and a million people to talk to when trying to report it. Like every other area of life, it’s pretty easy to get things wrong and it’s even easier to miss the innuendo or the intent of a particular speaker when assembling a story. Occasionally I see something in print that makes me wonder what was going on in an interview, whether on the part of the interviewer, the one being interviewed, the editorial board reviewing the article, or all three. One of those less than ethical occasions occurred last week in the pages of the AJC. The main thrust of the article was about the never-ending conversation about Sheriff Randall Johnson’s allegedly questionable expenditures, questionable at least to Fayette County Commission Chairman Greg Dunn and some in Fayette County government. But expenditures are not the issue. On the AJC’s pages, and now worldwide on the Internet, was the name of Fayette County’s undercover drug task force supervisor. That’s not the end of the Earth since his name has been in the paper before. The issue is that the agent’s wife was also named in the article. And that’s another matter altogether. Stupid doesn’t even qualify for this one. It’s much worse. In this case, politics and/or editorial preference have potentially put a person’s life in danger. The reason this is so stupid is that the agent’s wife, who is not an agent but is the person that shares the agent’s home, his family and his life, was blatantly included in the article. For most law-abiding people this may seem to be no big deal. But put yourself in the place of an undercover cop who has spent a career arresting drug dealers, convicted felons and people who carry and use weapons as a part of their illegal trade. And you work in metro Atlanta, one of America’s premier drugs meccas. Would you want these people to have the ability to find what I found so easily on the Internet? Would you want your wife’s name plastered all over the pages of a major newspaper and on the World Wide Web? Has anyone ever heard the term retribution? Anyone who thinks this is overstepping or stretching the realm of possibility simply doesn’t know much about the realities of law enforcement, the threats sometimes made to officers and deadly consequences that sometimes accompany them. Is it possible that the ones responsible for her name being in print just don’t see it that way? Is it possible they just don’t care? The news is the news, they say. Don’t filter it. Just tell it. I believe that, too. Yet I also believe that I must conduct myself in a manner that does not potentially put someone’s life in jeopardy. Fayette County, the AJC or other news outlets will likely take issue with that statement. I don’t care. Whether from a Fayette County source, the writer of the article or the paper’s editorial board, naming the name of a spouse of someone that works in undercover narcotics is stupid, arrogant, unethical and, I believe, immoral. Granted, I hold no journalism degree nor have I ever taken a journalism class. My view of the fourth estate is one that says report the news as precisely as possible, do it in such a way that the innocent are not put in jeopardy, do everything possible to give a voice to the voiceless and don’t back off from a fight. As for opinions, they go on the editorial page. Now you’ve heard mine. login to post comments | Ben Nelms's blog
|
Copyright 2010 - Fayette Publishing, Inc. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use Policy
Server 4
