Daniel Rodriguez is led away from his arraignment at Johnston Police headquarters on Aug. 12, 2013.
Image: Johnston Patch
The University of Rhode Island is scheduled to hold Journalism Day on Nov. 14 this year — and since two of the topics are “Stealing the News? The Ethics of Aggregating” and “Ooops: Why Online News Needs Editing,” I thought I’d share an example of when online media got it right — while traditional news outlets got it wrong.
Around 5 a.m. on Aug. 11, 2013, a team of Johnston Police officers responded to Oaktree Drive for a report of a double murder and kidnapping. Within hours, authorities issued an Amber Alert and named Malcolm Crowell, 22, as a possible suspect in the case.
Then, about noontime, NBC10 reported that Massachusetts State Police had arrested Crowell in Fall River, citing Massachusetts State Police spokesman Dave Procopio. WPRI-12 posted a similar report, but cited an unnamed Mass State Police source.
There was one problem, though — they hadn’t charged Crowell with anything.
I posted the corrected version of events just before 3 p.m., after I’d emailed Procopio and got this for a reply: “We are now being told suspect arrested [in Fall River] is not involved in the abduction” in Johnston.
In response to that message, I informed Procopio that local media were quoting him as confirming Crowell’s arrest. Within minutes, the online versions of each station’s article changed — without any note explaining the edits.
As the afternoon wore on, Crowell’s name was removed from the Amber Alert, and just before 9 p.m., Johnston Police announced that the 2-year-old taken from the home had been found in Providence.
The next morning at Johnston Police headquarters, Police Chief Richard Tamburini announced that Crowell had been cleared of any charges and had, in fact, cooperated with the investigation. Daniel Rodriguez, the main suspect, remains held at the ACI awaiting trial.
NBC10 tried to “correct” their version of the story on Sunday by reporting that Procopio had first said Crowell was a suspect, then claiming that Procopio had changed his story later in the day. That version of the story ultimately made it into the Associated Press account.
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When I first saw the topics for the URI event, this was the case that came to mind.
Did I “steal” the news from the TV stations, as the aggregation panel seems ready to argue? I don’t think so. I quoted NBC10’s initial report about Crowell’s arrest — much like the AP did, so I honestly don’t see what the ethical quandary is.
Making note of the TV stations’ reports and properly attributing them for the information doesn’t amount to “stealing,” as far as I’m concerned.
And when I saw that the URI journalism seminar included a panel discussion about editing online news, I figured that this would be a good case study — though maybe not in the way that attendees or panelists intend.
This was a confusing, highly-charged, and fast-changing story. In cases like this, it’s almost inevitable that news outlets will report information that later needs to be corrected.
The key to editing online news is more than just making the corrections, though. It’s critical that the news outlets specify in their online articles how the story changed during the course of their reporting.
When NBC10 simply changed the wording in their article to lay the blame on Procopio, then, they weren’t maintaining good editing standards — they were covering their tails and compounding that cover-up by pretending that they’d had that version of the story all along.
Having an online presence for news is an important tool — and it places more responsibility, not less, on the people who publish that news on the web.
Granted, this is just one journalist’s opinion — but I hope it’s instructive to the non-online news panelists who may believe that it’s the exception rather than the rule.
Correction: I revised an earlier reference in the third-to-last paragraph from “the TV stations” editing their stories to specifically note NBC10’s decision to change its online article.
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