How does media report homicide

[mommyof4]

Originally Posted by cpec2008

ok. you made your point very poignantly.

However, I think you all misunderstood my question due to my lack of missing a point in my post.

The homicide happened at a business address that my parent owned, and what the paper did was to report the HOME ADDRESS block of where my family and I are living. If that is completely legal, then so be it. You won, and I hope it won't happen to you or anyone else. I hope it makes you all happy and content.

Well, just publishing the name of the deceased would be enough to find out where he or she lived, any relatives, etc. I guess it depends on how much the person wishing to find you or anyone else wants to pay. It can range anywhere from free to the cost for services of a PI.

[quincy]

Cpec, are you asking again if the publication in the newspaper of your home address was legal? The answer again is yes. It is legal for a newspaper to publish the names and home addresses of crime victims, even when the crimes occur away from their homes.

The First Amendment is what allows for a newspaper to publish this information.

Newspapers will consider several factors prior to publishing a story and the information supporting the story. They look at the impact the story has on their audience (how it affects the readers), the proximity of the story's location to the readership (generally something in your neighborhood is going to affect you more closely than something in another city, state, country), the timeliness of the story, the prominence of those involved, the novelty of the story, and if there is conflict involved (wars, crimes, sports).

When a murder occurs in a particular area, it is not only a newsworthy event for that area, it is an event that can have a direct or indirect impact on the people in that area.

It is in the interest of the public for a newspaper to inform the public about crimes and the locations of crimes, and to inform the public about the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of the crimes, and to inform the public about the victims of the crimes.

The information published can be to assure the public of their safety (if the perpetrator was apprehended), or to alert the public to a potential threat to their safety (if the perpetrator is unknown or uncaptured). The publication of information can also aid law enforcement, by bringing forth potential witnesses to a crime, who may otherwise not be aware that what they saw or heard could have importance.

But the bottom line is that, whether you like that the information was published in the newspaper ten years ago or not, it was not illegal for the newspaper to publish the information.

[CdwJava]

I noted the Cpec wrote the paper printed the hundred block of the victim, not the actual address. Not that it would be all that difficult to track the address later by the name and via public records, it seems the paper did not print the actual address anyway.

- carl

[quincy]

When there is a murder in a community, it is generally not too hard to figure out which house belongs to a murder victim, even when the victim was not murdered in their home and even without the mention in a newspaper of a specific home address (or any address).

Police vehicles parked outside a home or in the driveway, law enforcement investigators entering and leaving the premises (to question family members or to look for evidence), relatives of the murder victim coming and going, news crew helicopters circling overhead, news vans with cameras rolling. . . . . all are pretty good indicators that something is going on in that house that involves a person who resides in that house.

The newspapers can either report the facts of a murder to assuage the fears of the residents in the area or to warn them of potential danger, or the media can let the residents in the area guess as to the facts or create their own facts based on rumors and lies. Most people would rather get the facts of an important story from a trusted newspaper than from an unreliable gossipy old woman living down the street, which is one reason why a newspaper will print information about the location of the crime and where the victims of crimes reside.

If someone wants to find out information about a person (where they live, where they work, what their phone number is, where they went to school, etc), they do not need to look at a ten year old newspaper article to do it. Personal information is available on anyone, to anyone who wants to go to the trouble of finding it.

[The Occultist]

Originally Posted by cpec2008

ok. you made your point very poignantly.

However, I think you all misunderstood my question due to my lack of missing a point in my post.

The homicide happened at a business address that my parent owned, and what the paper did was to report the HOME ADDRESS block of where my family and I are living.

One of the registered sex offenders in my town was asked to register after it was discovered he was calling pizza places, giving the phone number of his potential victims (pretending of course that it's his phone number), and when they ask for the address he just asks what they have on file to "make sure that's the right one." So, that's just one of MANY ways an address could be found, especially since it has been deemed that addresses are public information.

If that is completely legal, then so be it. You won, and I hope it won't happen to you or anyone else. I hope it makes you all happy and content.

What is it you want us to say? You think we're getting some kind of kick from explaining that what the paper did was legal? Would you rather us lie and say what they did was illegal? Look, just tell us what you wanna hear, and we'll just go ahead and tell it to you, that way you can be happy and content.

[cbg]

Quite a lot of things have changed in ten years. I do not live at the same address I lived at ten years ago, and ten years ago I did not live at the same address where I had lived ten years before that. And in the ten years before that, my address changed seven times. So even if the exact address was published, may I respectfully inquire as to why the murderer might think you still live there?