Covering Minors

Ethical questions popped up this week in covering a couple of stories involving minors.
The first, involving a 12 year old girl,who had been checked out of school without her mother's permission by a 37 year old man who was a friend of the family.

Our original stories featured her name and her picture. She was missing and the public had a reason to know what she looked like and her name. It turned out, the coverage did help in recovering her.

But once found, the issue becomes stickier. Should we now un-identify her? She is, complicit or not in her disappearance, a minor and the alleged victim of a crime.

The general feeling in our newsroom was that the genie was out of the bottle. Viewers knew what she looked like from five days of coverage and so we decided to continue to use her picture and her name in our follow up stories immediately after her discovery. So did our competitors.

But today, we took another step along a slippery slope - airing video of the girl with permission from the family, showing her playing with her dog in her grandparent's yard. The family was more than happy to talk to us and wanted to show that the girl was OK.

So if the family didn't have a problem, why should I? Maybe because sometimes it's healthy to take a step back and question what we do. And there are plenty of questions in this case.

There are clearly issues with this young girl and with the man who took her to North Carolina. But even here, the family seems almost unconcerned. In fact, to hear the family, you wouldn't expect any consequences from this incident. They've already forgiven the man and are ready to move on with their lives.

Authorities aren't being so tolerant, the man has several charges against him. Perhaps the family shouldn't be so tolerant either.

Who knows what emotional issues may result from this incident? Could our video, somehow come back to haunt her?

I can't answer these questions. But I just wish the girl's family had considered some of these issues a little more carefully. She is, afterall, only 12. And the adults, all of us, should be considering what's in the best interest of the child.

The other eithical issue is a bit simpler. Its the story of two brothers, one an adult, the other a minor on the run from police, captured in front our cameras. At the time of the arrest we showed video of the minor's face, though we didn't know at the time, he was a minor.

At a juvenile hearing a day later, the judge said no pictures of the 17 year old's face and we complied without argument.

But in our story, we showed viewers both the boy being walked to court with only his back and legs showing, and also his face during his capture from the day before. Should we have done that? Was the judge ordering us not to show his face at all, or just within the confines of his court? Did he even know about our video from the day before?

In cases of major crimes like murder, we routinely show minors' faces. But in this case, the kid is small-time, wanted for escaping from a juvenile facility in Middle Tennessee. He did cause quite a mess the day before with his brother. A several hour stand-off, a SWAT team, lots of excitement for the neighborhood, but in the end, they both surrendered without injury to themselves or anyone else. Is that enough reason to show his face? In my mind, no.