Month: April 2015

The Tampa Bay Times and the Gyro-Copter Pilot

Perhaps inspired by historic acts of civil disobedience in American.society, Doug Hughes, a U.S. postal service employee and resident of Ruskin, Florida, thought it was a good idea to make his point to Congress by delivering the message personally—by landing on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol in what’s called a gyro-copter, a vehicle small enough to fly “below the radar.” That delivery wasn’t “first-class”, but it was a criminal act (violating a federal no-fly zone) which could land Hughes in prison for up to four years. There’s no argument over the positive impact of civil disobedience in our society, but there is certainly reason to question his judgement or, at the very least, the timing of that judgement.

What’s worrisome is that no one, apparently, questioned that judgement. Not his friends or family. Not his co-workers. Oh sure, some of them now say they were worried about his safety. Not local journalists, who knew of his plans as early as last summer, but didn’t question his judgement. Among their arguments: it wasn’t their job to alert officials that someone planned to violate the no-fly zone of the nation’s capital, which is, to be clear, a crime. Actually, they now say they did alert officials—once Hughes was airborne and heading to the capitol and only to get a comment for the story they were about to cover on the ground.

In their defense, the Tampa Bay Times reporter and managing editor never made a secret of what was transpiring. They were very transparent in posting elements of the story—including Hughes’ intentions—on-line and through social media as it progressed. They even say they contacted the Secret Service and one of its ranks interviewed Hughes. They maintain they didn’t believe his intent was to harm the public (he told them so) and that he had no terrorist agenda.

The Times sent reporter Ben Montgomery and a photographer to Washington to cover the story, with the expectation there would be a story. Their explanation would seem to revolve around the idea that if they reported the flight to authorities earlier it would impact the outcome of said story. The counterargument could be that by not contacting the authorities earlier they ensured there would be a story.

Full disclosure: Jennifer Orsi, the Times executive editor, is someone I know. She’s spoken in my journalism classes (my Media Ethics course, in fact) and, more recently, gave me a wonderful introduction at a lecture I gave on my latest book at the Times’ parent organization, the Poynter Institute. She is, as I far as I know, a fine, responsible and thoughtful journalist. But thoughtful journalists can respectfully disagree. It is part of our ethical code, set forth by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), to point out mistakes in ourselves and others when they occur. It’s called “accountability,” not just for our own stories, but for the institution we call journalism.

Doing ethics, a term one of my colleagues coined years ago, doesn’t involve assigning blame. It does involve asking the right questions, even when the “right” answers are elusive (or there are none). This is one of those times. If I worked this scenario through with my students (which I plan to do), we would base our decision on the four pillars of the SPJ Code: Seeking Truth, Minimizing Harm, Exercising Independence, and Being Accountable.

Certainly, the Times’ decision was based on truth, or what they considered to be the truth at the time: that the individual in question—Mr. Hughes—had no ill intent, that he wouldn’t harm anyone and that he wasn’t mentally unstable. But what qualifies journalists to make that decision? I might ask, peripherally, how many journalists (or anyone else for that matter) could have predicted the mental stability of Timothy McVeigh, a decorated U.S. serviceman who seemed anything but a domestic terrorist? Specialists in forensic psychology have tried and failed in this and other instances, so what makes journalists so sure they can competently judge the state of mind of an individual who says he has nothing but civil disobedience on his mind?

I ask my students in every case study we consider to identify the “stakeholders”—those with the most to win or lose by our decisions. Mr. Hughes himself was a primary stakeholder in this scenario. He may have wanted the Tampa Bay Timesto be aware of and document his story as a way of protecting his personal safety, but I’m not aware of any journalistic shield that prevents authorities from shooting a flying object out of the sky when it approaches a national landmark, let alone the seat of our government. To put it bluntly, Mr. Hughes could have been killed; that’s not minimizing harm.

In the video that accompanies stories about Hughes’ flight, a tourist (one of hundreds on the Congressional lawn that day as there are every day) is heard saying “This isn’t good.” It’s an interpretation, but what if those in close proximity perceived this to be a terrorist act? Would hundreds of people be trampled, some injured, others killed? I don’t know, but neither does the newspaper. Did they consider that possibility? It, too, is harm.

Harm is something journalists are always asked to consider. It’s something that we can’t always predict or eliminate. That’s because, as in this case, we can’t always choose what is harm and to whom. That’s also why the SPJ Code reads minimize harm. We may not be in a position to arbiters of harm, but we, hopefully, have the professional “tools” to assess the possibilities.

Independence is a concept that suggests we make our own decisions, apart from what authorities, sources, or interested parties want us to do. Here, the Times would seem a bit afield. On the one hand, the reporter and editor did act independently in their decisions, unpressured by others in government—and that’s an important principle. On the other, they did follow a source who may or may not have been misguided or made myopic by his own zeal for a cause.
Finally, the newspaper was accountable by being very transparent in outlining the process that led up to its decision to pursue the story. They explained why they did what they did, so the public could assess their actions; reporters and editors seem to have been proactive, not reactive, in terms of their decision-making.

One of the most important aspects of the decision, however: the afore-mentioned timing. When Martin Luther King led citizens in the March on Washington, terrorism of the type we know today did not exist. There had been no 9/11. There had been no Oklahoma City bombing. There was no ISIS. Civil disobedience upset many in America in the 1960’s, surely, but the citizenry, let alone the government, had not internalized the possibility that real harm could be the intent. What happened at the U.S. Capitol this past Wednesday may have been the idealistic vision of someone who wants to improve, not destroy, America. But we don’t know that. And neither did the journalists involved.
Here are links to some stories that discuss the issue: