A Dallas woman who said she endured "unbelievable harassment" from the press when her daughter was murdered in 1985 said Friday journalists need to improve their balancing act between privacy and First Amendment rights.
However, journalists who participated in the same seminar on free speech issues said most reporters carefully weigh invasion of privacy concerns in their quest to inform the public.Reporters and editors once had the instinct to "go with it and worry about the consequences tomorrow," said Bob McCord, senior editor at the Arkansas Gazette. "It doesn't seem to be like that anymore."
About 60 journalists, media lawyers and others attended the seminar sponsored by the First Amendment Congress, an umbrella organization for 16 national media and communications groups. The organization tries to educate the public about First Amendment issues.
Patsy Day, who founded a victims' support group following her 14-year-old daughter's murder, criticized the media for publishing her family's address and camping outside her home with television crews. She said she was badgered by a reporter who wanted to film her daughter's bedroom and the media questioned whether she and her husband had violated child labor laws by letting her daughter work in the doughnut shop where she was abducted.
"One of the big gripes I have with the press is that they apply the same standards to (crime) victims as to public officials who are derelict in their duties," Day said.
The journalists said there were no clear guidelines for deciding when privacy concerns outweighed the need to have a fact in the story.
"For years and years, that collision of privacy needs and the need to know has been occurring on every level and it comes down to a judgment call," said Paul McMasters, deputy editorial director of USA Today.