Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Republic Dilemma

I was working my night shift yesterday at the Arizona Republic and I was sent to cover a police briefing about the defense attorney David De Costa, who smuggled drugs to one of his clients, a prisoner, during a court preceding. 
After I wrote the story and it was posted on azcentral.com, I started browsing other media outlets' coverage of the story. 
FOX10 and 3TV were reporting that De Costa had allegedly committed the crime in return for sexual favors from the prisoner's girlfriend, 19-year-old Emilee Keen, among other information that we did not know. 3TV posted the Form IV, which is a court document with the recommended charges from police against the accused. 
The form also contains a narrative of how the story and crime came to light. 
At this point, it was 8 p.m., and we were not going to be able to get our own copy of the Form IV from Maricopa County Sheriff's Office until the next morning. 
Although my night editor and I decided against using the information from the Form IV on the azfamily.com Web site, my real question is would it have been ethically right or wrong to use it knowing that we would be able to get the same document the next morning to corroborate our story? Is it possible that we may have been misled by the documents in the case that 3TV had altered them in any way? Or was it best to wait until for our own copies of the documents to arrive in the morning and write the story later, since we were already late?

The story was eventually rewritten later the next day. This is the follow-up. You will notice that we added the needed information that other outlets were reporting the night before, and we corrected the misspelled name of Ms. Keen. 

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Suspected by who?


In
a story by Carol Rosenberg of the McClatchy Newspapers that ran in the Republic and online at azcentral.com on Sept. 10, the lede/lead reads, "Pictures of Khalid Sheik Mohammed surfaced on the Web on Wednesday - a startling flesh-and-blood look at the man suspected to be the Sept. 11 mastermind - just days ahead of the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks."
Shouldn't we say at some point who suspects him of the crime? The story does not mention background. Just that pictures have surfaced from Guantanamo Bay. Also, since he is being held there... can't they take all the pictures of him they want?

If you're more interested in the pictures themselves, which azcentral.com did not post, take a look:

(Nothing very exciting here. Check out the blog where they were originally posted: http://jarretbrachman.net/)

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

AZCentral.com should...

really stop allowing comments to be posted on stories like this: Police seek help finding missing Phoenix man

The comments themselves explain why. 

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Connection between ASU and the alcohol bust at The Vue?

Well obviously, but I guess there is nothing to back up that connection. 

Per the correction in The Arizona Republic on Saturday, the article "Alcohol Bust at Apartments" that ran on Friday was published with a headline that inferred the private apartment complex, where 85 minors/providers were arrested with mostly alcohol related charges, was associated with the university.

I don't see the need for the correction unless the administration complained, but no one really needed a headline to point out that the minors in The Vue across from the university's campus were from ASU...



*This is the beginning of my online media journal for my ethics (JMC 366) class with Richard Ruelas.