Being up-front with readers ‘no long applicable’ at the Journal Star
From today’s Journal Star:
A statement released Tuesday by the Dahlquist* family did not run in full in Wednesday editions. Sports Editor Bill Liesse felt it appropriate it run now. We have deleted a third paragraph regarding Danny’s wake and funeral that is no longer applicable.
Well, thank you PJS from saving readers from having to read a whole paragraph that’s no longer applicable. I’m sure readers will appreciate you for not wasting a whole 30 seconds of their day. But for those of us who are curious, what WAS that paragraph? Thanks to blogger Peoria Illinoisan, we can read it:
“Based on the intrusive behavior we have experienced the past two days, we will be very disappointed to see television cameras and reporters at the visitation and funeral for our son, Danny.â€
Of course, the Journal Star sent reporters to attend both services (here) and had photographers outside both (here and here), making sure the grieving faces of friends and family members are recorded for posterity.
This is probably going to mark me as a heretic at the Church of the Public’s Holy Right to Know, but I’ve never really agreed there’s a need for the media to attend these things. The news media’s job, in my humble opinion, is to increase the public’s knowledge and understanding of the world so that they can better function in and promote a free society. I’m not sure how looking at photos of people’s faces as they are crying over their dead relatives makes America a better place.
Someone is sure to say that media coverage is these events is a way for all Peorians to cope with the grief over this tragedy. I’m thinking that gawking isn’t about helping people grieve. All the people who do need to grieve are already there.
The sad truth is that the media often hides behind claims of the public’s right to know when all the media is doing is satisfying consumers urge for voyeurism.
These were services for one young man. The family’s request for privacy should have been honored. Just because it was possible for reporters to attend and physical possible for photographers to stand across the street and snap pictures, that doesn’t mean it SHOULD have happened.
But people can respectfully disagree on this issue. So let’s put aside the issue of the morality and ethics of photographing a funeral against the family’s wishes. There also the issue of the Journal Star’s deliberate decision to keep its readers from knowing that they’ve been doing this against the stated wishes of the family. How ironic that the public’s right to know doesn’t include facts that make the PJS look bad. It’s somewhat short of a lie, but not by much.
It would have been one thing to not report on the family’s statement. It’s quite another to report on it, but leave out that stuff that makes your news organization look bad.
Twenty years ago, they would have gotten away with it, because the good-old-boy media industry frowns on one news organization criticizing another. Sure, it might have ended up in some media review that the public never reads. But this is the age of the Internet. There’s no way that bloggers weren’t going to catch this and report on it. Did the journalistic brain trust at 1 News Plaza really think for one moment that bloggers wouldn’t find out and call them on this?
The Peoria Journal Star: Unethical AND stupid. What a sad combination. And, how sad that this is what is becoming of Peoria’s one and only daily newspaper. We need something new in Peoria.
* Background: Four
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Amen.
And bloggers don’t?
Most blogs aren’t owned by multi-million dollar corporations, nor are they operated by highly trained professionals who stake their success on being able to reliably relay information fairly and accurately.
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C’mon Billy, you can’t have it both ways.
One minute, you’re slamming the mainstream media (usually the Journal Star) as old-fashioned, unethical, slow and slipshod while saying bloggers are more vital and representative of media’s new wave.
And now you’re claiming bloggers are really just low-budget, poorly trained amateurs who don’t relay information fairly and accurately?
Which is it?
Bill, this is gonna be one of the few times we agree. While the PJS has every right to be out on the street taking pictures (being inside a private ceremony is something entirely different), if the family isn’t ok with it, you shouldn’t be there. A lot of times, families will ask cameras to be there because they want their love one to be remembered. Sometimes, families want to grieve privately.
I don’t agree that anyone has been intrusive and I’m sorry the family feels that way. From what I’ve been told, the family is upset that the facts have been reported in this case. That IS public knowledge and needs to be reported. This is one case where money isn’t going to shield them and that may be hard to deal with, but they did ask for the media not to be present. Everyone else respected that wish and in my opinion, did the right thing by doing that.
Evil scum. Years ago, Sharon Faulkner (wife of slain police officer Jim Faulkner) told me that a photographer crawled on the ground and then scurried under a chair all in order to snap a picture of one of her sons crying at his father’s funeral. As cruel as it is, a funeral shot on the front page sells newspapers. The more pain shown on the faces of grieving family the more money there is to be made. In this case, corporate greedmongers are the only members of the public being served.
[...] incident is less offensive than what happened recently in Peoria, but not by a much. It’s no big deal for an editor to assign a reporter to attend funeral [...]