Newspaper’s disclosure raises ethics questions
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By Jesse Roman
The Morrisville-based News & Citizen newspaper revealed last Thursday that reporter Mickey Smith had been a roommate with sexual-assault suspect Shaun Bryer and another man from January 2006 to July 2007.Smith, who has worked at the paper for several years, has played a large role in the newspaper’s coverage of the case since news of Bryer’s arrest broke Sept. 14.
However, in the month that followed, the newspaper made no formal disclosure of Smith’s relationship to Bryer, and allowed the reporter to continue reporting the story.
Bryer, 28, has pleaded not guilty to 17 felony charges —10 counts of aggravated sexual assault on a minor under age 16, six counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child, and one count of possessing child pornography. He has also been charged with two counts of disseminating pornography to a minor. If convicted, Bryer faces life in prison.
In an editorial published Oct. 15 in the News & Citizen, Smith wrote that he had a very close relationship with Bryer.
“During that time and since then, I considered us friends and we did the type of things friends would do … socializing, helping each other out around our respective homes, going out to dinner, and the like,” Smith wrote. “I can count on one hand the times I saw Shaun with the original two victims in this case. In none of those situations did I see anything I would have considered strange or troubling.”
A police affidavit, filed in Lamoille District Court by Detective Lance Burnham, said the alleged sex assaults on the two boys happened at Bryer’s apartment in Morrisville.
Bryer’s relationship with the victims began about five years ago; Bryer allegedly began watching pornographic movies with the victims about three years ago and the physical assaults allegedly began about two years ago, the affidavit said.
One of the boys told investigators the alleged assaults occurred after school and before Bryer’s roommate came home from work at 6 p.m.
The affidavit did not indicate whether the roommate was Smith, or the other man.
Individual rules
Unlike other industries, newspapers and other news media do not face formal regulation, nor is the industry self-regulating, with official or legally binding ethical guidelines such as lawyers, doctors and accountants have.
Newspapers are free to make up their own minds about the right way to do things.
Still, while there is no evidence that Smith’s reporting was compromised, media experts agree that failure to disclose a reporter’s close relationship to an alleged criminal in a case that reporter is covering crosses some serious unspoken ethical boundaries.
“This is a grievous ethical lapse by the newspaper. And it’s no more excusable because it’s a small-town paper,” said Walter Robinson, a journalism professor at Northeastern University and leader of The Boston Globe team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. “Of course, there are times when reporters and editors find themselves wrestling with stories because those stories involve people they know. That’s true at The Boston Globe. It’s even more true at small papers in small towns.”
However, in this case, “the conflict is so obvious here that … disclosure alongside the first story would have been insufficient,” Robinson said. “On a matter of such importance and urgency to the community — the safety of children from predatory adults — Mr. Smith should not have been allowed anywhere near the story.”
Traci Griffith, who teaches media law and ethics in the journalism department at St. Michaels College in Colchester, says the News & Citizen “did not violate any hard and fast ethical rule,” but did give readers a reason to question its credibility.
“There is already a perception that the news media has a bias one way or the other and we certainly don’t want to feed into that,” Griffith said. “Being transparent is the best way to go. You have to give the readers all the information that’s out there, and this was a big chunk of information that was left out.”
Tyrone Shaw, director of the journalism department at Johnson State College, agrees.
“It’s really an unfortunate situation for a number of reasons,” Shaw said. “Readers should have been informed from the beginning about the nature of the relationship between the reporter and the main subject of the story. Because, when people eventually find out about a pre-existing relationship, however unfairly, they are going to question the previous articles.”
News & Citizen Editor J.B. McKinley said he knew from the beginning that Smith and Bryer had been roommates and friends.
Asked why the paper did not disclose Smith’s close relationship with Bryer earlier, McKinley said, “I guess that we felt like (last week) was the time to disclose.”
McKinley would not comment further, saying, “Mickey said what he wanted to in last week’s article and we’ll leave it at that.”
Smith said the editorial staff considered disclosing the information earlier, but decided against it.
“I guess it wasn’t thought of as being an important piece of news,” Smith said of his relationship with Bryer.
The editorial staff set up a system so the stories would not be compromised — for instance, laying out separate responsibilities and double-checking work, Smith said.
“We said, ‘Let (reporter) Amy (Kolb-Noyes) do the community reaction pieces and I’ll do the criminal pieces.’ That’s the decision the three of us made at the very beginning,” Smith said. “My stuff was on the criminal aspect, using the police records. There is a paper trail for everything I wrote. It’s all in the police record, so people know where I got the facts I got.”
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