Monday, March 27, 2006
Naming Names
By Lucy Hood
American Journalism Review
April/May Preview
Excerpt:
[Gloria] Rubio was the subject of a story [Ginnie Graham of the Tulsa World] wrote in March 2005, about a tax
service in Tulsa that caters to both legal and illegal immigrants. ..."The intent of the story was not to find an illegal immigrant,"
she says, "but to showcase this service that helps immigrants to
assimilate and pay taxes."
Graham, who covers the social services beat, had written about
undocumented immigrants before. At times she'd withheld a name at the
request of an immigrant or an agency that had facilitated an interview,
but whether to use Rubio's name in this particular story was never an
issue. ...[W]hen
Graham asked her if she had a problem with her name and photograph
appearing in the paper, Rubio said no. "And we asked her again," Graham
says.
About a month after the story ran, agents from U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement showed up at Rubio's house. They arrested her and
began deportation proceedings after ICE's Oklahoma City office received
an anonymous letter containing a copy of the story. ...
The Society of Professional Journalists' ethics code says journalism's
top priority is to report the truth. Journalists should "identify
sources whenever feasible," the code says, yet they should use "special
sensitivity" when dealing with inexperienced sources, and they should
"show compassion for those who may be adversely affected by news
coverage."
Says Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, "You
have to assess the risk and make a decision that minimizes the harm to
that individual but maximizes the ability to tell the truth."
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