Have you seen me? (I might have questionable mental capacity)

This is not a rant about that makes-me-shudder phrase now used by newspapers and network reports to describe Someone-Who-is-not-Where-He-or-She-is-Supposed-to-be.

It's about the secrets families tell police departments when it happens to that certain Someone.

People disappear in South Florida and elsewhere. They don't GO MISSING. And they never WENT MISSING. They got lost. They left their troubled families. They vanished. They were kidnapped. They intentionally  hid. They got sucked into drug and prostitution. They wandered away. Unfortunately, sometimes, they got murdered.

When someone disappears, a family member contacts a local police department and suddenly medical privacy goes out the window. 

Here are some phrases from south Florida police department news releases about missing people:

• Deputies are looking for a missing West Park man who suffers from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. (Name redacted), 72, has been missing since just before 4 p.m. from the area of 3500 S.W. 40th Avenue in West Park
• The missing person is a twenty- year- old male that has no physical or medical conditions. He jumped into a canal after arguing with family members and then threatened to kill himself.
• The missing person is a twenty (20) year-old female that has a low mental capacity. On Saturday, July 12, 2014, at approximately 5:00 p.m., she was engaged in a heated dispute with her grandmother and fled.
• (Name redacted) was last seen at home in the early afternoon. Ms Laura suffers from Dementia, is of questionable mental capacity, and is very child like. She is not a danger to anyone in the community. (Name redacted) left home without her medication.
• The Police Department is requesting your assistance in locating this missing adult. She suffers from schizophrenia and has not taken her medication.
• The Police Department is requesting your assistance in locating this endangered child, (Name redacted) was last seen at the location above at approximately 8p.m on 07/19/2014. She was wearing an orange blouse and white short pants. (Name redacted) suffers from depression and according to the family, she has a slow mental capacity.
• And my personal favorite: The missing person suffers from an un-diagnosed mental condition. Unknown if also under the influence of drugs or alcohol.   Missing person walked away in an unknown direction.

In almost every case these alerts are regurgitated on local news...either on broadcast, digital, social media. Or all three.

And it always makes me uncomfortable.

Do we really need to throw up a photo and include the "un-diagnosed mental condition" in our script?

I think not.

It's good to be first but better to be right

I've waited a few days to post about the DEBACLE at the "networks" of CNN and FOX.  Shame.

Read more here.

Learn.

Never make the mistakes they made.

Ethics question. What if the news is brutal? And you captured it?

When I showed John this photo, without any explanation, he thought it was a young man, hand-cuffed next to a van that had been shot up. 

He didn't know the 16-year-old was dead, apparently from police gunfire, after this young man and his father allegedly killed two police officers earlier in the day.  Two other cops were wounded in this shoot-out.

Death toll--four.  Wounded--who knows how many?

This picture is from Friday's front page of the Memphis CA.  I clipped it from their website and then discovered it was in the "top ten" for the Newseum's Front Page gallery.

Full disclosure.  The Commercial Appeal is a Scripps paper and I work for Scripps.  And as you probably know, I spent nearly nine years in Memphis at WMC-TV (formerly a Scripps TV station).

Here the CA's editorial boss explaining his decision to publish the photo.

And there's more. Here's a report from WMC after the shooting  about video they captured before the photo was taken.

My thoughts:  Sometimes news is ugly.  Sad.  Horrible.  It is our job to report the facts, as best we can, without bias, without judgement.  I don't know how this teenager and his dad got into so much trouble.  I don't know why they apparently shot police officers.  I'm sad for my friends in Memphis who are in law enforcement (and for the ones who have to report on it) because it seems like my former home town has had its share of senseless violence.

Four men died in the Mid-South yesterday.  One was just a kid.  It's the job of news gatherers in that community to do the best they can to discover the truth and report it.

The Commercial Appeal reporters and photographer did their job.  I salute their courage in publishing this photograph.

"Hello, I'm a Reporter. Sorry For Your Loss. Can I Have a Picture of Your Loved One?"

The quote doesn't belong to me--some former KSHB journalist said it years ago and it came up while we talked about how aggressive reporters should be when covering murdered children.  (Thursday afternoon, this teenager was stabbed to death about 45 minutes south of Kansas City in a rural area that doesn't see much violence.)

After reading the Plog's admonition to KC reporters regarding postings on the 14-year-old girl's Facebook memorial, I thought about two reporters I worked with in other markets.  One in Miami and one in Memphis -- each had their own tactics for dealing with the relatives of the recently murdered.

The WSVN reporter's actions were the worst and a manager brought her scheme quickly to an end.  Background:  Miami in the early 90s was easily one of the most violent cities in the country.  At WSVN where I worked on the assignment desk, we ignored many, many homicides.  But some, based on unspoken criteria, broke through.  Tourists, the famous, children, the wealthy, anything tainted with Santeria; those killings were covered zealously for 24-48 hours.  After that, even the murdered children mostly were forgotten.

I recall the WSVN reporter's remarkable ability to get a grieving family to talk on camera about a recently slain loved one and even to provide photos.  Finally, I asked her about it.  She was very proud of her discovery--if she promised the family the TV station would promote a memorial bank account (shilling for donations), they would almost always agree to an interview.  And then, she'd tell them that it would really only work if her interview remained "exclusive."

I don't think she is still working as a journalist anymore, thank God.

The Memphis reporter has moved to a larger market and his methods aren't nearly as despicable.  He would, when a family member agreed to talk, start the interview and then, if the person he was talking to began to weep, he would say "Where are those tears coming from?"  Which would often mean even more tears and wailing as the person interviewed recalled happier days and times.

After more than thirty years in local news, covering murdered children should be rote by now but it's not.  Each murder is different.  None of the decisions about coverage are easy.

"What do I know?  What do I need to know?"  Those two questions always come to my mind (thanks Al Tompkins) when I'm dealing with ethical decision-making...like covering the murder of a beloved daughter, sister, student, friend.  Here's the list Bob Steele put together for high school journalism students.  It's the same one we "pros" should use.

By the way.  Russ Ptacek handled his request for information exactly the right way.  Honestly.  Above-board.  Without pandering.  That's the way it should be done. 

Back to the list.  Did you need to know that before she was killed, Katie Rios, an honor student, was in the band?  Did you need to know her friends called her "Smiley?"  Did you need to know her principal remembers her as a mentor when she was class president?

You did.

Otherwise, you cannot properly mourn our world's loss of Katie Rios.

Watch out for black women?

Here's an email I received during the 5pm news Tuesday night, followed by my response and his back to me. (Spelling and punctuation has not been changed.)

From: john (redacted)
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 5:14 PM
To: Phillip, Peggy
Subject: Beating At store Parking Lot
I am so sick of your liberal biased news. I never watch you anymore unless the channel happens to be on.You are so liberal and bias you do not report the news, your try and report your agenda. I know this because NEVER do you identify a suspect if he is black or Hispanic if it can be avoided. Case in point when you reproted about the elderly man being beaten I knew the suspect was a black female becasue you never mentioned a description of suspect. I changed to channel 9 and sure enoguh a complete description.No wonder you are rated last. Quick your liberal BS and be a news station . Report the facts even if they do not fit your policrics
SHAME ON YOU


My response was copied to the newsroom:

Mr. (redacted),
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. We report suspect descriptions when they can reasonably assist the police in finding persons responsible for crime. In this case, the description from police was vague--black woman, 150 pounds, 5-foot-six inches tall.

"Black" is the color of the words you are now reading but has also been used to describe people whose skin tones cover just about every racial and ethnic group in the world, including tanned white people. The media is often accused of withholding ethnicity and race from criminal suspect descriptions as some sort of cowardly act of political correctness. What may appear to be political correctness is our best effort to professionally and ethically report the truth.

Nonetheless, your opinion is important and I am sharing this with the appropriate news personnel.

Sincerely,Peggy Phillip
News Director

From: john (redacted)
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 6:49 PM
To: Phillip, Peggy
Subject: Thank you / Beating At store Parking Lot

I appreciate you responding. Does show consdieration. Most lberals do not answer as they are too self righteous and important for conservatives like me.Does not change the fact your news broadcasts have been neglect for some time.; You DO show a bias and you DO NOT report when a crime has been committed by a person of color. Yes you show after the fact with photos and desrciptions when some one has been arrested but no never ahead of their arrest. Yes I have to turn to other stations as Channel 9 that reported a description of woman and car. Some one watching your news cast would not have had that information. So you do get creds for answering me., Thak you. But you still fail, the "We are liberal and we will report the news as we see it not how it really is test"
Thanks
John

What do you think? Did I handle it properly? It's a rhetorical question but the topic of suspect descriptions should be addressed regularly in every newsroom.

I think I understand John's frustration. He's angry and I don't blame him. In this horrifying case, an 81-year-old man was beaten outside a grocery store while he waited for his wife to finish shopping. This happened in a part of Greater Kansas City (Prairie Village, KS) that used to be safe. Now, not so much.

We are in the information business. It's our job to report as fully and accurately as we know how. But what is "black?" What do you think when you hear that word as a descriptor?

Crimes against the innocent make us feel helpless and we want/need security and solutions. I get that. But demonizing every darker-skinned female of medium height and weight in the greater Kansas City area isn't the answer.