By Christopher Rowland
The Boston Globe
Published on 3/2/2004
Excerpt:
Bob Steele, an ethics specialist at The Poynter Institute, a journalism training center in St. Petersburg, Fla., said newspapers covering trials balance their own First Amendment rights to free speech with a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial. Although he said he would not have made the same call as the Journal or Post editors, he said he was not prepared to join those blaming news organizations for the mistrial.
“There are other potential reasons for a mistrial,” he said. “I don’t think I would have named her in this case based on that, and it’s clear most news organizations didn’t name her.
“That’s a choice individual papers make, not unlike the choices we made on what photos to use on the horror in Iraq this week,” he went on, referring to graphic photos of burned corpses of American civilian workers.
More of this article…
Search Google News for more quotes by Bob Steele…
