You have done it once again. You have dug up a criminal history on a dead victim and printed it. You have offended me for the last time. This is the last straw. Please cancel my subscription, as your paper is no longer even suitable to have my dog piss on, or to start a fire with.
As a synopsis: A Dallas Cowboy team member, Dwayne Goodrich, killed two men in a hit-and-run. The victims were helping pull out a man trapped in a burning car. The paper in all of its wisdom decided to print the criminal history of one of the victims. Yes folks, you’ve read that right, one of the victims. No he wasn’t doing anything criminal. Yes indeed it was totally unrelated to the article.
This is not a lone incident. This is actually the third time in the last year, they’ve done this. I can not express to you how much this offends me. Why would they do this?
The irony here is that right next to this article is one about the perpetrator entitled “Goodrich’s problems never off the field”. This is an article dedicated to what a nice guy Goodrich is. I am disgusted.
I really am canceling my subscription, with a milder version of the letter above being sent to the paper.
Someone provided me with a link to a story on your site. However, viewing this story requires registration. I would like to register for your site in order to read said story, so that I can get offended and then cancel my registration.
I think it’s a bit gaudy of them to dig that up, but perhaps they were trying to contrast his past problems with the fact that he was now trying to make a new life, one that he will never get to?
It doesn’t seem completely out of context if that is the case, trying to garner sympathy for a man who will not be given a second chance, but they could have gone about it a better way, if that indeed was their intention.
I doubt that they would print that letter, IMHO. It’s good for a “Go the fuck away” letter, but not as a letter to the editor. You do need to express your outrage with their insistence in printing negative information about victims. Even if they were doing it out of good intent, as Jetgirl suggests, it is unseemly at best to bring this stuff up. Especially since the victims were involved in completely selfless acts, endangering themselves to help others.
I would also check their “rules” for letters to the editor, and maybe not mention your desire to cancel your subscription. Not in THIS letter, at least.
Agree with Cheesesteak about avoiding the obligatory “I’m canceling my subscription, pinheads!” reference. Might help get a letter printed.
I only venture onto the Dallas Morning News website on the morning after Cowboys losses, so that I can enjoy the sniveling and ranting by the sportswriters.
I don’t see what you’re so offended about. You say that his background was “totally unrelated to the article”, but so were a lot of things. Just in the snippet you posted, it mentions five times that Goodrich was driving a BMW. Does it matter? Is it relevant that the victim worked for a cleaning company? That’s in there too.
I think it’s a shame that people were killed while performing such a noble act. And that the person who hit them would just drive away is loathsome. But as part of the article they decided to describe the victim, the life he lead and who he leaves behind. I don’t think the paper has an obligation to portray him as a saint.
I agree with Jetgirl. I’m a newspaper copy editor (used to work for the Tallahassee Democrat, in fact!) and I would have let at least part of the victim’s record stay in the story. It seems the author was trying to build sympathy for the victim by saying that he was cut down just as he was trying to build a new, better life.
Granted, there are many, many wordings that would have better conveyed that concept. I would have sat with the writer and gone over his notes trying to find a legitimate way to say something like, “Friends and relatives say Smith’s loss is made more difficult by the knowledge that, after several run-ins with the police, he was trying to build a better life for himself.” Insert quotes, insert paragraph detailing record.
Especially considering the attribution: this isn’t something they “dug up” on the victim; this is what the relatives talked about. The part about him being nearly done with his probation was important to them. They wanted people to know what the vicitim was trying to overcome when the accident happened. Sure the reporter consulted court records, but that’s just fact-checking and an attempt to be accurate. The way I read it, the relatives brought it up.
And frankly, it’s a big part of the victim’s life. If they mentioned it a week later, it’s not newsworthy, but right now they went out of their way to contact the relatives and find out something about these people . . . because right now, when we’re all wondering “who did this affect”, it’s the reporter’s job to answer that.
So Robot, you are telling me that if a woman was…say killed while she was pulling a child out of a burning building that she just happened upon, it would be appropriate for a paper to state “Ms. Smith served two years for prostitution in 1998”. No it wouldn’t. Not just because she’s a woman, but because it makes you think of her in a different light. An unfair light in my estimation. The DMN does the same thing in this case, it just not as shocking.
As for the BMW thing. Basically they had to print it that way. They couldn’t say “Goodman” without saying “alleged”. Witness said there was a BMW, thus no “alleged”.
His history is completely unrelated to the story. Why should the reader give a flying fuck when he would have gotten off probation?
I understand what Juniper, and Jetgirl are saying, and I wouldn’t have had a problem with Juniper’s wording. But what was printed was inappropriate.
Here is my letter:
Dear Editor,
I am deeply disturbed and saddened about the "Victims often stopped to help out motorists " (16 Jan 2003) article. I feel that it was in terribly bad taste to publish details about one of the victim’s criminal history, especially in light of the selfless act the victims were performing when they were tragically killed.
To compound my disappointment, you chose to publish, on the same page, a glowing report (“Goodrich’s problems never off the field”) on the life of the perpetrator of this horrible crime.
This is not the fist time your paper has reported criminal past of victims. I feel this is under any circumstance, inappropriate. However, in this case I find it to be outrageously offensive.
Please take care when you are describing the life of an innocent victim.
Relatives said Mr. Wood had gotten into trouble with police a few years earlier.
A judge released him on probation in October 2001, after Mr. Wood served nearly 18 months on a credit card abuse conviction, state prison records show. His probation would have ended in March 2004.
Just because they put them in one paragraph, does not mean Relatives gave the details, as is noted by the lack of quote marks.
also as noted by the attribution: “state prison records show.” light strand, what the reporter was doing in this case was being accurate. Even if the relatives gave all of those details, the reporter should still have checked them against court and prison records.
Mr. Wood was convicted of a single, nonviolent crime; that’s not what most people think of when they hear “trouble with police.” This matter was easily cleared up by adding details that are, frankly, a matter of public record anyway.
So someone says, “yeah, he was in trouble with the police when he was a kid, but now he’s pulling out of it” turns into a report on his criminal record, with how long he was in, what his crime was, and when his probation would be over.
Personally I think of “trouble with the police” as teenage hi-jinks, not an 18 month jail term.
Moreover, I have already said that this is a pattern with this particular paper. A man died in a car accident, and they chew on his corpse until they found that he had a drug conviction ten years earlier. Despite the fact that he had no drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the accident. In another incident they picked at the corpse of a murder victim until they came up with a minor conviction (I can’t recall what it was for) on him too. This was also another case of the crime being totally unrelated to the circumstances of the victim’s death.
I think Wood’s criminal history had no place in this story. I stand by my disgust.
Because when a reporter called up and said, “tell me about Mr. Wood’s life,” it was something they were willing to talk about, be quoted on, and use to describe his character.
But even if they only mentioned it in passing, as you said . . .
You know, they didn’t need to call his relatives or mention his job or his kid or any of that. Most papers don’t write obituaries for everyone who dies in their circulation area. It’s possible they weren’t going to write one for Mr. Wood, but they felt he deserved more respect than a regular hard-news story would have given.
So they put together an article that focused on the victims of this incident. And somewhere in this article, they made space just for Mr. Wood. They called relatives. They mentioned his family, his job, his kid, and yes, the obstacles he was trying to overcome.
Like Juniper said, there are many ways of doing this, some more tactful than others. But the very mention of that aspect of his life isn’t disrespectful.