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During an hour-long round-table discussion yesterday, four journalism representatives from Washington State University and the surrounding Northwest region met to discuss the ethical implications of journalism and what can be done to minimize the harm caused during the reporting of the news.
About fifty students, alumni and administrators gathered at the Minimizing Harm workshop, sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists as part of the 33rd annual Murrow Symposium, to hear the panelists discuss the morality of the reporting done in a 2006 story concerning registered sex offender Nathan Sterr, then living in the residence halls.
In this discussion, whose panel included Peter Bhatia, editor-in-chief of the Portland Oregonian, and Rebecca Tallent, a journalsm professor and SPJ representative from the University of Idaho, the issues of the case were discussed, along with the consequences of media action, which ultimately may have caused the student to leave the school.
Jacob Jones, a third member on the panel and former editor of the Daily Evergreen, WSU's student publication, was part of the writing team which covered the Sterr case in the spring of 2006. When asked whether or not Sterr's leaving the school could have been predicted, Jones said that the effects of the exposure of something embarrassing in a person's past can have a very profound impact, especially in a small community.
"I kept in my mind the whole time we were reporting it, that he had a right to an education," he said. "He had done everything that had been asked of him since his conviction."
Sterr was convicted of First-degree child molestation at the age of thirteen. After five years of rehabilitation and efforts to rebuild his life, he was accepted to WSU in 2006, where he informed administrators and local law enforcement of his status as a level 2 sex offender. According to Al Jameson, WSU's Interim Vice President for Student Affairs and final member of the panel, it was the opinion of the administration that Sterr was of the lowest risk to other people; he had done every positive thing possible to atone for what he had done. Sterr was granted admission and given the option to live in the dorms with a roommate.
Unfortunately, his roommate was not informed of Sterr's status, who after being informed by other students who had found out from the Internet where all of the information is public knowledge, informed his parents back in Seattle. The scandal began when the roommate's mother went to Seattle's KING news station with the story. After KING broke the story live and identified Sterr openly with a picture, the Daily Evergreen and Jones's team followed with print coverage further ironing out the facts and exposing that Sterr would probably be forced to leave school because of the coverage. He did not finish the academic term
As Becky Tallent said in the discussion, "the overarching scope of ethics is to do no harm, but in this business you can't help it; it's the nature of the beast."
The discussion did not revolve around the accuracy of the facts presented by KING or The Daily Evergreen, which were immaculate, but rather it was ethical to expose all of Sterr's personal information, even though it is public record, if it was obviously going to end his education.
"There's a difference between publishing and reporting; you usually report 800 percent more than you publish," said Peter Bhatia. "As a reader, I would want to know everything, so it's a very tricky equation figuring out which information holes to leave."
Where a situation might be cut and dried in the case of a public official embezzling funds, it is much more complex when dealing with the young and presumably innocent like this case, where someones life, career or education might be at risk, he said.
Becky Tallent said that SPJ, with it's 250 chapters and nearly 10,000 member journalists, reworked it's own code of ethics in light of events such as this one, specifically concerning themselves with children and other people unable to defend themselves from just such harm.
"To me, this was pretty much business as usual for the media," Tallent said. "That's why we have these codes, to guide us; they're just tools, we still will have problems."
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