I read the article that upset the sheriff, and I saw no lack of courtesy or disrespect for the deputies. There was no editorial criticism of their conduct. If the sheriff feels some understanding he has with the Spokesman Review has been violated, he should convey his explicit concerns directly to Steve Smith.

I am completely at a loss to see how the Spokesman Review’s reporting violated any public trust as the sheriff complained. Withholding relevant information from its readers without any justification would be a violation of our trust in a free press; timely, accurate reporting is not.

Relying on unofficial sources who may not have access to all of the investigative information could make the reporting incomplete but not inherently inaccurate as the sheriff suggests. If the sheriff believes it was factually inaccurate, then the he should meet with the reporter and Steve Smith and point out the precise inaccuracies. That the sheriff has chosen to make his case in a press release rather than in person with the Spokesman Review’s editor and reporter strongly suggests that his case would be weak.

That other news media chose to withhold information from their readers and audiences was their decision to make, not the sheriff’s. Their decision to voluntarily withhold information does not obligate the Spokesman Review to follow suit.

Having one’s newsworthy on-duty conduct observed and reported by the news media is a fact of life when one chooses law enforcement as an occupation. A law enforcement officer’s identity is not always reported, usually because it’s not relevant to the story. In this instance, the identities of the deputies are indisputably relevant. The sheriff’s complaint seems to be more with the timing of the release.

If the sheriff felt so strongly that release of the deputies names would be inappropriate, if he felt release would imperil the deputies or their families or would jeopardize the investigation, then he or his official spokesperson should have contacted all the media at the incident scene and made the request. Those who were not at the crime scene should have been immediately contacted separately. Had the sheriff been able to make a justifiable case for withholding the information for a reasonable time, I suspect that all the media would have complied.

Bill McCrory
Whitecaps.blogspot.com

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