News flash: Bad idea
Troy police may have had the best of intentions in having cops pose as a TV camera crew. Channel 10, which provided the camera, may have also seen it as a good deed.
But while the deception may have ended a standoff, this stunt could well prove bad for journalists, and not particularly good for public safety, either.
As police tell it, the story went like this: Around 11 p.m. on Thursday, June 2, a man crashed his car into the door of a Stewarts convenience store on Vandenburgh Avenue, then held the manager and an employee at bay with scissors. Crisis negotiators say the man was having some of “mental episode,” and complained that “no one is listening to him.” They tried to get the man to surrender for about 90 minutes, persuading him initially to release one of the hostages.
Looking to end the standoff “as peacefully as possible,” in the words of Officer William Fitch, he and fellow negotiator Sgt. Nicholas Laviano came up with the idea of offering the man an opportunity to talk with a TV camera crew about his grievances if tuletters@timesunion.com
he would then give up his remaining hostage. The man agreed, and the officers called around to TV news crews. Channel 10 arrived first and the officers commandeered the camera, sending in an officer dressed in civilian clothes. Eventually, the man released the second hostage, and surrendered.
So all’s well that ends well, right? Not so fast.
This ploy may have worked this one time, but the damage it will do to the public’s trust in journalists, and to their ability to do their jobs, is incalculable.
Trust is essential, even critical, between journalists and their subjects — who are sometimes people afraid of being identified, or living on the fringe of society and the wrong side of the law. That trust is jeopardized when people have reason to doubt whether a person claiming to be a journalist really is one, rather than a cop or some other agent of the state. The risk is not just that people won’t talk to journalists, but that they could attack them under the mistaken belief that they may be out to arrest them.
Independence — especially of government, including police — is a hallmark of a free press. That foundation gets shaky when authorities think they can co-opt reporters or commandeer equipment as they see fit. And journalists have enough trouble getting people in government to understand the role of the free press without blurring what should be a bright line between covering stories and becoming part of them.
And in a time of “alternative facts,” institutional mistrust, and propaganda mills that pose as independent media, journalists often find themselves struggling to help the public understand their role as well. Newspeople and news organizations need to be crystal clear on what it is — and what it is not.
Police have no more business posing as journalists than journalists have posing as police. We’re certainly glad the crisis ended without injury or loss of life. But the same end might well have been accomplished without this stunt, especially if all involved, police and journalists alike, had considered what it might cost down the road.