How should the media cover bomb threats at schools and other public places? Should different mediums use different standards?
This question arose among editors yesterday morning. And I, in my role as online ACE, inadvertently provided the impetus.
Backstory: Two weeks ago, a late afternoon bomb threat led to the evacuation of Eastern Washington University’s library. The event was creating buzz around the newsroom, so I had the cops reporter make some calls and post something online. We kept it to a brief inside the next day’s paper, but TV stations led with it that night.
Fast forward: On Thursday afternoon, we learned about a similar threat at EWU via KREM2-TV’s website. One of the city editors, who had been on vacation during the last threat, remarked that we don’t usually cover such things. Again, we had found out about the threat from KREM’s website, and the cops reporter had started making calls – after a second city editor asked her to look into it. In the confusion of apparently diverging instructions, I had the reporter go ahead and post the story.
Aftermath: On Friday morning, Editor Steve Smith initiated a discussion on our bomb-threat policy at the budget meeting. I won’t go into details; you can find an in-house account here and Smith’s previous policy explanation here, but we concluded that times have changed and it’s time to alter our approach.
The main reason we hadn’t covered threats such as those at EWU before is that they almost invariably turn out to be false. And by the next morning, a false threat that caused two hours of disruption for a hundred or so people the previous afternoon has very little news value, so there’s no point in wasting space and ink in the paper. Also, we didn’t like to give the people making the threats the publicity they craved. Television stations, who have the advantage in timely reporting, have long approached the matter with a different philosophy.
But consensus emerged Friday morning that the Web changes that. When news of a bomb threat breaks, posting that information online tells people what’s happening and where while the event is unfolding. People who might be affected can learn what’s happening and act accordingly. When no bomb is found, a revised post can provide that information and close the story loop. And unless the threat caused a disproportionate amount of chaos, the event is absent from the next morning’s paper.
This policy makes sense to me, and not just because it validates how I responded during the EWU bomb threats. I understand that using the Web to report threats provides that previously scorned publicity. But in terms of prominence, an item that’s online for a few hours is far different from an item printed in the newspaper for the historical record.
So, growing audience, what say you?
