Had it not been Super Bowl Sunday, the world might have taken even more notice about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, found dead on Feb. 2 wit
h a needle in his arm and 70 bags of heroin in his apartment. A quick Google News search this morning showed more than 5,300 articles about him — but little suggesting that the story shouldn’t be covered because of the harm it could cause his family.
Contrast that with Jan. 30 death of Danielle Downey, a former LPGA player and
head of operations for Auburn University’s women’s golf team. Three days after her death, The Birmingham News / Alabama Media Group reported that alcohol was likely a factor in her death. Other media
covered it, too.
Underneath Carol Robinson’s Feb. 3 story and in her Facebook feed, many people were critical of her decision to report that Downey had consumed multiple beers and would not give her car keys to friends.
Some examples of reader comments:
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Others came to Carol’s defense, citing the fact that it’s public record. And one commenter tied reporting of Downey’s death to the reporting of Hoffman’s death:
Reporting on tragedy is a difficult job, and it’s easy to forget that every story can potentially cause harm. And it’s also easy for reporters who cover tragedy for a living to start thinking like surgeons, forgetting that their job is as much about bedside manner as it is about dealing with flesh. (Of course, doctors bury their mistakes; journalist print theirs for all to see.)
It goes against the fundamental practice of truth-telling to leave unanswered the question of how a person died, or of waiting until after the funeral to report unflattering news that the family is likely to know. This is even more true in the case of Downey, who was a public-enough figure that Auburn released a statement announcing her death.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for decisions about what to report and what to leave out, but the Aristotelian mean lies somewhere between ignoring anything that might cause harm and the notion of New York Sun editor Charles A. Dana, who wrote: “I have always felt that whatever Divine Providence permitted to occur I was not too proud to report.” Finding that mean requires journalists to balance the public’s right to know, the “publicness” of the death and the person who died, what to do about special cases such as suicide, and other factors that must be considered in the harshness of deadline.
And readers ought to consider their own ethics, too. People who complain about how media cover the death of someone they know simply because accurate-but-unflattering news is revealed should steer clear of coverage of the Hoffmans, Presleys, Paul Walkers, and others of the world.
3 Responses
I think what is not mentioned here is that she is a local reporter on crime and law enforcement matters in Birmingham. She has been very vocal about supporting the University of Alabama where her daughter is a cheerleader. I also believe that in her reposting the link that people probably in the back of their minds think it was a slam on Auburn University.After all why is she reporting on the death of a coach in Auburn?
Carol also is an Auburn graduate, for what it’s worth.
That’s right Chris, I am a graduate of Auburn where I studied journalism. Roll Eagle? War Tide? Oh yeah, this story has nothing to do with that does it?
To answer your question, anonymous, I wrote the story because when it first broke Friday morning, I was the reporter on duty and available. I wrote the story Monday evening because I was the one able to get the report from troopers, as one of Alabama Media Group’s law enforcement reporters.