To Name, or Not to Name

It's been a staple of local, nightly news for decades: while an anchor recites a vivid crime report, sometimes embellished with security footage or street interviews, a name and mugshot flash across the screen. Then, in the paper the next day, a column full of all the details a reporter could obtain on the alleged culprit appears. Beyond our own hometowns, national news often gives us the names of criminals before they give us anything else—sometimes that's all they've got. But is that right? 

This week, Bob spoke with Romayne Smith Fullerton, a journalism professor at the University of Western Ontario, and Maggie Jones Patterson, a journalism professor at Duquesne University, to talk about their book “Murder in Our Midst: Comparing Crime Coverage Ethics in an Age of Globalized News.” Fullerton and Patterson spent a decade studying how ten different countries publicize criminals and crime. And what they found was a world of journalists unaware that everyone does it differently. 

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