The Internet has given the media some very sophisticated tools to tell stories, break news, and share and distribute information globally and instantly. Sometimes that comes with unintended consequences that challenge how we operate as journalists at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
For decades, it has been our practice to not identify victims in cases alleging sexual assault. That has been a longstanding practice at most of the newspapers I have worked for in the past two decades. This is simply intended to protect the victims’ privacy because of the sensitivity of sexual crimes. We have similar policies for crime allegations against minors who are not being charged as adults. Sometimes news circumstances call for a different practice, and we make a decision to alter our usual practice. Other times, though, the way news unfolds alters the practice and a possible victim of sexual assault is named inadvertently.
Earlier last week, we wrote a story about a 17-year-old from Charlotte, N.C., who had been missing for more than a year when she was found alive at a Gwinnett County home. The first day’s story was pretty basic with not a lot of details about her or how she ended up here in metro Atlanta. Because there was no knowledge of any sexual allegations and her family had been very public about her search, the girl was named in the first story. Within a day, we learned that police had charged Michael Ren Wysolovski of Duluth with false imprisonment, cruelty to children/deprivation in the first degree, felony aggravated sodomy, and interference with custody.
We again printed the name of the missing teen and ran her picture in the paper and online. Somehow we failed to connect the dots that the charges against Wysolovski essentially alleged that the missing teenager had been sexually assaulted. Print coverage since then has not included the name or photo, but instead a sentence stating that this newspaper does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault. Many would argue, and rightly so, that you can’t un-ring that bell, particularly in print.
Still, when we make mistakes, it would be wrong to not try and right those mistakes as best we can. Of course, moving forward we decided that we would not print the alleged victim’s name or use her photo. A pretty simple task for the print edition, but what about online, where the stories are shared in real time?
Initially, that, too, sounded pretty simple. Just go in the stories and remove the name and photos.
In the words of digital audience specialist Pete Corson, “We had only recently begun covering the story because the Atlanta angle was new, so we didn’t have a year’s worth of coverage to change.”
In each article, Corson changed the name to “the 17-year-old girl” or “the girl” and also removed the names of her parents. He did the same for photo captions, “highlighting” the text and metadata such as article description fields and SEO text (“Search-engine optimization” text is what you see returned on a Google search).
But Corson soon learned that that was just the beginning.
“I also removed two photos of the teen from the articles and for good measure, had tech support remove the files entirely from our content-management system (what we use to publish our websites), Corson said.
The same photos needed to be removed from the AJC photo archive that serves our print production. By then, our photo editor was already working with the team to make sure those photos would get removed from our in-house system.
“We usually think print should have tougher standards about when to use a victim’s name because, in theory, it’s easier to correct a story and remove a name online,” said print senior editor Laura Weaver. “But now we’re seeing that’s not always true. The digital story is woven into other stories, and it’s hard to find every reference.”
Indeed, we had staffers searching every way imaginable for instances when the woman’s name would show up in any of our content. For certain, if you search for stories about this case, the name will appear in many publications, particularly since she was missing for more than a year.
Once she was found — reportedly with the help of a woman in Romania whom she befriended online — her case went from missing person to a case involving allegations of kidnapping, sexual assault, and other charges. In fact, if you happen to know her name, our stories may still pop up in a Google search even though her name or photo is nowhere in the story because Google still retains some of that data in its search engine.
You may wonder why we think it’s important to go to so much trouble to remove a name that many people would still be able to find through simple Google searches or by reading stories from other publications. It’s simple. Our goal is to be consistent with standards and guidelines to ensure integrity and credibility.
There will be times when we have to make exceptions, such as the high profile case involving the abduction of teenager Elizabeth Smart 15 years ago in Salt Lake City, Utah. Smart was missing for almost nine months when she was spotted with a drifter 20 miles from her home.
Then there are also instances when the victim wants to be identified. Even then, we still state that our normal practice is to not name the victim. Regardless, the exceptions should never be the excuse of our own initial oversight.