Mea Culpa
The code of ethics couldn’t be clearer. It begins, “First, do no harm.”
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Nate Carlisle, a 2001 grad now working for the Tribune of Columbia, Missouri, didn’t buy that. “I thought reporters’ job is to report relevant facts,” he responded. “Just what does the phrase ‘strong likelihood of harm’ mean? That there’s a 50-50 chance of harm? That it’s as good a bet as December snow in Minnesota? For that matter, what kind of harm should we be concerned about? Physical harm? I often have people say they don’t want to talk to me about a certain topic because the resulting attention could be emotionally harmful or could place their employment, business, institution or reputation under scrutiny. Are we supposed to withhold facts because of that? Where are we supposed to draw the line?”
But Rachel Otto, a 2003 graduate, recalled a communications law class where students “learned of the Columbia woman who was attacked one night, only to have her name (and address, I believe) printed in the Tribune the next day, allowing the attacker to find and kill her.” And Patrick Butler, a 1986 graduate in charge of programs at the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., wrote that he’d just had a “great, passionate ethics discussion” with a group of Latin American journalists. “They ultimately came down about 3-1 against publishing the name (partly because they know what would happen to the guy if he was a soccer fan who somehow caused the home team to lose in their countries).” A Colombian journalist remembered Andres Escobar, whose blunder allowed the U.S. to upset the Colombian team 2-1 in the 1994 World Cup. When Escobar returned home to Medellin he was promptly gunned down in front of a discotheque.
I was startled to read John Kass’s account in the Friday Tribune of going over to Bartman in the stands and asking him a few questions before the security guards led him away. Kass described him as “more numb than terrified, though he had plenty to be terrified about.” The Tribune let a golden opportunity slip through its fingers. Properly instructed, Kass could have persuaded Bartman that his life was in danger, led him out of Wrigley Field to a waiting company car, and checked him into a hotel under a phony name. The next day the Tribune, rather than primly withholding Bartman’s name, could have offered an exclusive–the Steve Bartman story. WGN TV’s evening news could have broadcast an exclusive meeting of Bartman, Sam Sianis, Dusty Baker, and Moises Alou, all united in their feisty Cubdom and unanimously predicting victory. Bartman could have watched the seventh game from the Tribune Company box. When one company owns everything, wonderful things become possible.
To his credit, Mnookin caught his mistake and corrected himself online.
Keller had given herself that rare assignment, the breaking think piece. “I wanted to get at why we have these intense feelings about sports,” she says. She conducted interviews into the evening, and during the game wondered if she’d be writing out of “exhilaration in victory or despondency in defeat.” She had another lead in mind if the Cubs won, though she can’t remember what it was.
