Gilligan: TH to change policy regarding naming victims

The biggest change readers will see will be in what we call the police “blotter,” which runs daily on Page 2A — a list of bulleted items describing police activity from the daily law enforcement reports that we check. Typically, in a case of domestic assault, for example, the blotter lists the name and identifying information of the person arrested and the charges that the person faces. The next sentence lists the person who was subjected to the assault. After this change, that second sentence will no longer be there.

In some case, in which the charges approach a higher threshold, such as attempted murder or when there is a weapon involved, we believe those incidents pose an increased community concern and they often run not in the blotter but as small stories in the paper. In those incidents, we will continue to report victims’ names.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve discussed how we handle the names of victims in these delicate situations.

I was part of a similar discussion some 20 years ago, in which we met with law enforcement officials, an assistant county attorney and victims’ advocates to determine best practices. At that time, we agreed that running the names in all cases made sense for a couple of reasons. People have a right to know what kind of criminal activity is happening in their neighborhood and who is involved, and advocates at that time felt there was some benefit in making people aware of who the victims were — after all, there is no shame in being the victim, and perhaps friends and neighbors could reach out to help them. We also agreed that if a case arose with special circumstances in which the police felt our running the name of a victim would expose the person to further danger, they could reach out to us about it, and we would defer to their request. That rarely happens, but we have honored that agreement over the years.

Today’s world looks a lot different than it did 20 years ago. Some of the requests we’ve had for a change in policy came about because of a significant increase of crimes against people in the workplace — emergency room nurses and doctors, teachers, law enforcement. Often, those folks who have encountered violence in the workplace would prefer not to have their names publicized, and we think that makes sense for us going forward. Similarly, we will eliminate naming victims in some theft cases, which can lead to further victimization. All the information remains a public record and available to anyone who goes searching for it. But for our part, we are choosing not to put the names out there in some circumstances. We live in an era in which news articles remain just a Google search away even years later, and people’s personal information is easier to find than it was years ago. Remember when an unlisted phone number granted you anonymity?

We can’t automatically retroactively eliminate every victim’s name from past stories with this change. But if someone requests that their name be removed from a past article, and it fits under our new guidelines for withholding names, we will remove it. To make such a request, go to www.telegraphherald.com/removeme/ and fill out the form.

If you have questions about the new policy, please drop me a note.

Also, don’t forget to get your First Citizen nominations sent in before the Dec. 1 deadline. Nominations for First Citizen can be submitted at TelegraphHerald.com/firstcitizen, or mailed or dropped off to me at the TH through Thursday, Dec. 1.