Reporting Homicide and other crimes: Rochester D&C story today


Posted this in response to a story in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle today. Rochester's homicide rate is up for the year. But other crime rates are down. Traditional news values here do disservice to our community by combining what are essentially two stories into one.

I think the D&C did a terrible disservice to the community and to the RPD by combining what are essentially two stories into one.

There's the homicide rate story, which deserves its own separate treatment precisely because homicide cuts so deeply and painfully into the fabric of any community, regardless of who the victims are.

I have a student in my journalism class now whose brother was murdered. The brother was a drug addict. That makes it easy for the rest of us to just dismiss it.

But the true victims of homicides aren't just the people who died. They have family and people who loved them, and the pain of loss through violence cuts broader and more deeply than any other loss.

My student -- one of my best students, btw -- loved her brother dearly and not a day goes by that she does not think of him or remember how he died. Her mother died, essentially of a broken heart, three months later. Neither of them deserved to suffer this way.

Many of our homicides are never solved and the killers are never brought to justice. Why is that? Not for lack of police work, but because people who have information will not come forward.

If we have a high homicide rate that speaks not only for the police department but also for our community. If we dismiss drug-related and gang-related crime as if the victims and their families don't matter, we live in a community that accepts homicides as a way of life.

And if members of the community who have knowledge that could help the police do not come forward, they also bear responsibility for the loss. If killers know they will never be brought to justice, they can carry on as if there were no laws.

The second story is the reduction in other crimes. Crimes of opportunity (burglary, larceny, robbery, vehicle theft) are down. These all reflect not only the increased presence of the police as well as organized strategic responses in hot spots, but also the fact that citizens are working closely with the department.

I understand the journalistic decision behind putting all of this into one story. Editors (and perhaps the reporter) see it as a story about the report on Rochester's latest crime rate stats. News values dictate that because the most serious crime rate is up, that's the part that will get the greatest emphasis.

But traditional news editorial decisions are made without consideration of the impact of the result on the community the news organization serves. We have some terrific GOOD news here, but because the newspaper followed traditional news values, that story gets buried. Few people will read this story and remember the other stats. Everyone will focus on the homicide rate.

In my memory (nearly 17 years in Rochester), this newspaper has rarely followed up on homicide stories, giving fair due to the victims' families and the impact murder has had on their lives. It has also given very little attention to the near-homicides -- the shooting, stabbing and assualt victims who lived. And it NEVER covers shootings where nobody was actually hit. You can count on dozens of those happening through out the city on any given day.

We would have a much higher homicide rate if the shooters didn't have such bad aim.

Perhaps if our community understood better what it means to be a victim of violence and how deeply that hurts the families and friends, more people would come forward to report information that could solve these crimes.

And perhaps if our community understood better how much good is happening, people would feel more confident about coming forward.

Posted: Mon - May 7, 2007 at 11:04 AM          

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