In the court of public opinion: Tabloid or not?
May 10th, 2008, 10:52 am · Post a Comment · posted by madisontaylor
I hate these kinds of stories. Lots of readers don’t believe that, but it’s true.I’m talking about when the Times-News — or any other newspaper for that matter — reports on cases involving child molestation. Add rape and incest in there, too.I absolutely hate it.
Covering cases such as the one involving the former Graham police officer, which we dealt with over the past two weeks while Kevin Hopkins was on trial and ultimately acquitted, is a no-win situation for the newspaper, its reporters and editors. I wrote more about this in my column this week. This is why we don’t routinely report these cases when they come to court. It happened here because the person charged was a police officer. And so people know, publishing stories like this one don’t sell any extra papers.
But I didn’t feel good about it and no one else here did either — including our reporter Keren Rivas.
Lots of readers felt the same way. One who lives in another town sent me an e-mail asking how I could justify our tabloid style journalism used in this case. I wrote back that the only other option was to not cover it at all.And when I spoke to a group at the Village at Brookwood, a few questioned the placement of the story on the front page day after day. I explain in the column that we based that decision on where the story was placed in 2006 when Hopkins was originally charged. Whether that was the right decision or not was a moot point by now. To remain consistent, we kept the story on the front page – all the way through to the finding of not guilty.
One of our readers over this period was Mr. Hopkins himself. He sent me this e-mail after a story we published just before the trial about new evidence in the case.
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I would appreciate it greatly if you would get all the facts before printing an article citing “new evidence”. That makes it sound like there is more evidence that just came forward and that is not the case at all. It’s nothing new, only evidence that wasn’t originally released to my attorneys when we filed for discovery a year ago. I also would like for a front page article when (not if) my name is cleared since anyone can make an accusation and it can make headlines (truth or not). Don’t get me wrong.
I’m not angry with the Times News and I understand you are just doing your job, but you have no idea what the whole story is and how it affects not just my life but the lives of my family. Especially my son’s life. I can handle the attacks because of my strong faith in God and my large support group that’s behind me every step of the way. Other members of my family aren’t as able right now to handle these misleading articles and the rumors that follow. They have been through enough. I’m just glad the end is finally drawing close so I can clear my name and move on with raising my son in peace.
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One man at the Village at Brookwood also cited our “tabloid-style” placement of a large photo of Hopkins in our paper the day he testified in court. We had a reason for this, too. That was the first time Mr. Hopkins had the chance to speak in his own defense. It was his day in court after being profiled on TV news and in print for years. We felt it only fair.
Did we err in this case? I’m still not sure. We didn’t set out to cover this matter as a New York tabloid might. But what we are trying to do is develop pages overall with a more bold style, a design that we will use on lots of stories, not just the ones about crime, courts and punishment.
Just as I did in my column I’ll end with this e-mail sent to me by Kevin Hopkins after he was found not guilty this week. This tells me a lot about what our role should be.
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I wanted to thank you and Ms. Rivas for the opportunity to clear my name and say my peace. You both were very professional. I am glad to see people like you are willing to help clear things up in the end instead of only bringing it to the public’s attention in the beginning when I couldn’t talk to anyone. You did more than Fox8 and WFMY2 were willing even though they didn’t have a problem with plastering my mug shot on TV every morning.
