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The Charleston Gazette
James Haught
Thursday August 22, 2002
WELL, it happened again. Last week, a former state highway commissioner â who
went to prison in
West Virginia's largest bribery scandal â died at advanced age. In a news report, we
mentioned his
corruption record.
His family was devastated, horrified, enraged. My phone rang all day with bitter calls
accusing us of
cruelty. "How could you be so ruthless to his children?" was the general tone. "We
never told some of
the grandchildren about it. Don't you care about the pain you cause?"
One granddaughter e-mailed me: "You brought up some very hurtful information that
would have been
better left unsaid.... Your paper owes my family, especially his children, an
apology."
I felt sympathy for the anguished relatives. I wished that our news item hadn't
appeared, by chance, on
the same page as the obituary written by the family.
I tried, unsuccessfully, to tell the callers that a newspaper is in a predicament in such
cases. If we
mention the conviction, the family is shattered at a time of grief. But if we simply
report that the former
high state official died, and say nothing about the controversy that engulfed him, we
would be printing a
misleading account. In effect, we would be falsifying the public record.
In the deepest sense, the Gazette didn't injure the family â the highway
commissioner did so when he
helped set up sham corporations in other states to receive bribes from contractors in
return for state
highway purchases. (It was part of the historic scandal under Gov. W.W. Barron.
Former Gazette
reporter Tom Stafford discovered the out-of-state firms, and the FBI moved in to
prosecute.)
In the newsroom, we often sweat over ethics quandaries such as the one posed by
this death report. In
the end, we usually decide that we have no choice except to tell the truth. If we start
concealing certain
unpleasant facts, where would it end? How would we draw the line between what
we'll print and what
we'll hide? Worst of all, the newspaper would be seen as untrustworthy if we
concealed facts that are
widely known.
A few years ago, we faced the same dilemma about suicides. When we reported that
teen-agers or
distraught people took their own lives, it upset families already in distress. They often
turned vehemently
against the paper and canceled subscriptions.
There's really no solution to the suicide issue â but we found one, of sorts. We let
families purchase
their own obituary notices and write whatever they want. Many of the reports say the
deceased "went
home to the Lord," not revealing the cause of death.
More broadly, each time we report that a West Virginian is charged with rape, or
convicted of murder, or
sentenced for embezzlement, or the like, the news hurts the person's family.
Relatives may be ashamed
to face neighbors. Children may be taunted at school.
We're aware of this hurtful fallout from the news, but we don't know any way to avoid
it. We can't stop
reporting crimes. The public has too much at stake in the need for a safe and honest
community.
There's a lot of ugliness in the world. That's why police and prosecutors and prisons
exist. Newspapers
must report enforcement actions, because our job is to inform people about matters
of urgent public
concern.
We regret that it causes grief to some innocent relatives. However, the factual record
exists in every
community and state â and a factual newspaper must reflect reality.
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