When suspects’ names appear in crime stories, their lives may be broken and never put back together.

For years, people have begged The Associated Press, known as the “AP,” to scrub their indiscretions from its archives. Some of those requests “were heart-rending,” said John Daniszewski, standards vice president at AP who helped to spearhead the worldwide news service’s new policy.

Acknowledging that journalism can inflict wounds unnecessarily, AP will no longer name those arrested for minor crimes when the news service is unlikely to cover the story’s subsequent developments. Often, such stories’ publication hinges on an odd or entertaining quirk, and the names are irrelevant. Yet, the ramifications can loom large and be long-lasting for the persons named.

How much detail American reporters include in a crime story depends on how newsworthy it is, our research found. A minor story might be based solely on a police incident report. A big story, the kind discussed around the water cooler, can include interviews with acquaintances and deep probes into the person’s past. Whether the story is big or small, most accounts include full identification of the accused in the American press.

“I received a very moving letter from a man who, as a college student, had been involved in a financial crime,” Daniszewski recalled in an interview with us, both media ethics scholars. When an old news account of the incident surfaced, the young man lost friends. Even his upcoming marriage was jeopardized until he could persuade his fiancée and her family that he had learned from his experience and was not an incorrigible villain.

For others, stories of their alleged crimes showed up on Google searches 10 or 15 years after the incident, even if they were never convicted or courts had expunged the criminal record. Daniszewski said many people making requests to the AP had been arrested for minor drug offenses, such as small amounts of marijuana, but stories about those offenses were blocking them from getting jobs, renting apartments and even meeting people on dating apps.

Read more:
https://theconversation.com/the-largest-news-agency-in-the-us-changes-crime-reporting-practices-to-do-less-harm-and-give-people-second-chances-165158