Mike Chitwood, the sheriff of Florida’s Volusia County, is posting mugshots of children who have been arrested for threatening school violence.
Newsrooms are largely resisting the impulse to follow suit, evidence that American journalism is on a path to reform. Naming and shaming a child who threatens violence flies in the face of recent journalistic trends of deliberately minimizing the names and images of mass shooters.
This is a sign of the dramatic change that local newsrooms are embracing by focusing on public safety rather than sensational crime.
Not only is this sheriff’s publicity stunt harmful to children, but it also risks fueling contagion around both threats of violence and actual school shootings. It’s also vindictive. At a news conference last Friday, Chitwood said, “Every time we make an arrest, your kid’s photo is going to be put out there and if I can do it, I’m gonna perp walk your kid so that everybody can see what your kid’s up to.”
This is exactly the kind of law enforcement message that reporters should examine and challenge, rather than mindlessly repeat.
In journalism, we’ve moved a far distance from uncritically repeating information distributed by law enforcement and calling it news. This is particularly true of mugshots, which are inherently prejudicial and harmful to the individual and the community at large. Most initial charges are reduced. Newsrooms often do not follow up on initial arrest reports, leaving a permanent and inaccurate record.
Why? Because news judgment requires that journalists assess the needs of their audiences and make editorial decisions accordingly. While audiences are intensely interested in public safety, they have indicated they are dissatisfied with random stories about specific incidents of crime that don’t provide context, information about historical trends and accountability for the criminal justice system. People want to know how to protect themselves, how safe their communities really are and what percentage of crimes the cops and prosecutors are solving.
I know all this because at Poynter we are in the midst of an initiative to guide local newsrooms across the country as they reform their coverage of crime. So far, in three years, 85 newsrooms have completed our six-month course, revising their definitions of crime news and implementing standards for covering public safety.
This comes at a moment when many communities are in a crisis of both real and threatened violence. Schools have been dealing with exceptionally elevated threat levels since they opened this year. These threats and lockdowns are disrupting schooling and frustrating students, parents and teachers. While some might be tempted to deploy public shaming as a solution, it’s repulsive to see it in action.
A video that the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department posted on its Facebook page shows several clips edited into a compilation, including the quote from the press conference, a table full of airguns and other weapons and a clip of deputies perp walking a sixth-grade child from a squad, putting him in leg irons and ushering him into a cage. It’s clearly a stunt because Sheriff Chitwood is leading the child. On most days the sheriff himself is not involved in processing arrested criminals.
Most newsrooms in Florida and around the country made clear and deliberate choices to not play into Chitwood’s publicity antics. That’s despite the fact that the image of the boy would probably go viral on their news sites. (Except for the Daily Mail, no surprise.)
Newsrooms that did use the video or still images made edits so that the child’s face was not visible. For news consumers, this is a good litmus test. News sites that exploit this child clearly prioritize sensationalism over public safety.
Newsrooms that tell you about the sheriff’s actions and why it’s harmful are demonstrating a level of thoughtfulness and intention around their choices. They are avoiding harming this child. And they are avoiding creating more contagion around mass shootings. Hopefully, more newsrooms will pull back the curtain and explain how they are making choices with the needs of the audience and public safety in mind.
It’s a solid precedent and one that should be universal for all children of all races and nationalities.
