Zac Echola is muffin but trouble

Say it: An open letter to The Grand Forks Herald

Published on 18/08/08
by Zac Echola

And any other newsroom that feels it necessary to build their business on the desires of the rubbernecks

I’m disappointed to see the Herald ran a fatal accident story, complete with photograph on Sunday’s front page.

While I concede that deaths in public are a matter of public record, I cannot see the public value of giving these types of stories undue weight on the front page.

What news value do such stories have? Who do they impact beyond the people directly involved? At what magnitude does a rather unimpressive accident become so important that it be splashed across the front page? How can you consider something so routine unusual enough to disrupt the balance of fair coverage? One would expect that a Pulitzer-winning paper would have a firm grasp of such things, but maybe all the decent people at the Herald left for greener pastures.

Was it because a moped was involved? If that’s the case, by putting the story on the front page are you implying that mopeds and scooters are intrinsically dangerous? Why don’t you grow some stones and report on the safety of these vehicles instead of using someone’s death for your own purposes?

You have set a terrible precedent. Will you always put these accidents on the front page? I hope you’re not stupid enough to let that happen.

And the photo. Did you stop to consider the harm running a photo of the vehicle could cause? By not releasing the name of the victim, you understood that the family likely had not been notified. And yet you gave enough information (location, age, vehicle) to identify the victim without actually naming him. Did you even ask if the family had been notified? I doubt it. I know that the much of the victim’s family, including one of his daughters, had not been informed by the time you published.

Maybe I’m misguided. Maybe thousands of 63-year-old men ride their white mopeds up and down that residential street every day. Or maybe your laziness and disregard for decades of journalism’s ethical standards is the real issue here.

“People read it.” That is your only excuse. You know it and I know it.

I have never understood media’s desire to pander to rubbernecks and gawkers. It is one thing to set aside your emotions to report a story, another to set aside your humanity to sell litter lining. To call you vultures would be incredibly unfair to vultures.

No wonder this business is failing. You’ve lost touch with the people in your communities that give a damn. You’ve traded them in for suckers and rubes. And you know what they say about birds of a feather…

The end. Or is it?

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