To name or not to name, that is the question.
The decision to publish, or not, the names of people who die in tragic accidents is a difficult one. One would think the guidelines for these things would be the same whether we are talking about the newspaper you are reading right now or the Toronto Star, but that’s a naive view.
A spokesperson for the B.C. Coroner’s Service told us this week that office would not release the names of the two people who died in separate car accidents on the Alberni Highway in January. The spokesperson said — in a cryptic, unclear way — that the coroner’s office is dealing with privacy concerns related to the release of names.
It begs the question: why do we need to publish these names in the first place? Yes, there is a paper-of-record responsibility we take seriously here and traditionally we have published names in stories like the car crashes mentioned above. But past practice does not automatically mean best practice.
We could grab the names off social media sites and publish them, sure, but how responsible is that? Getting the names in an official manner from the police or coroner’s service means the proper notifications (next of kin) have been made, which is important, especially in a small community.
Speaking of social media, here are two comments that were made under our online version of the story about the most recent fatal accident:
“Thank-you for not listing the names in both tragic accidents. Too bad people on other social sites have listed them,” said one poster.
“This is no one’s business,” said another. “If you knew the person you will hear about it. If not, mind your business.”
Do we need to publish the names? We are interested in your view (editor@pqbnews.com). We insist letter writers put their names to their letters and our current editor signs his editorials, just saying.
Another issue related to publishing names comes from crime stories. Once a person is charged with a crime and their name is in the public domain, it is often published and broadcast by media outlets.
We do not have a courthouse in our coverage area, nor do we have the staff to sit in court every day. If we named those charged, we believe the responsible thing to do would be to follow them through the entire court process. We cannot commit to that currently, so we do not publish those names.
— Editorial by John Harding
