I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of community newspapers since Bourne Fire Department Deputy Chief Paul Weeks was arraigned on three counts of rape.
I have become a acquainted with Deputy Chief Weeks in my nearly two years of covering the Bourne Fire Department. First as a Lieutenant, then as a Deputy Chief, he was frequently around the department’s Main Street headquarters, where most of my reporting on the department is done. He appeared to me as somebody who understood the role of the department in dealing with the media, as he has always been eager to provide me with whatever details he could related to incidents that were responded to on his shift. As with most of the folks I deal with on a regular basis in Bourne’s public safety offices, he is not somebody I would consider a friend, but a friendly resource. (Reporters aren’t allowed to have any friends.)
I’m writing this not in an attempt to insulate Deputy Chief Weeks from the very serious charges he now faces, but to give you an idea of some of the difficulties reporters face when having to write negative things about people with whom they have developed a working relationship.
Those relationships? At a community newspaper? They’re everything. Establishing trust with folks in your community is just about the most important thing you can do as a reporter. It’s how you will get the tips that will account for about 95 percent of the copy you file every week, and how you can be sure that people will at least consider picking up the phone when they see that it’s you calling, and they know you want to talk about something they did wrong. Being able to handle relationships with sources in a way that allows you to speak candidly while not alienating them in the process is a hard earned skill that I’m striving to attain. I think being able to maintain such a dynamic makes for good newsgathering.
Here’s the rub, though; you can only be perceived as betraying somebody’s trust once you’ve earned it. And though no good reporter (or decent human being) would ever aspire to undermine anybody they’ve establish a trusting relationship with, it’s very easy for people who live in the public eye to feel betrayed. Deputy Chief Weeks has helped me do my job better by providing me information I need to write about his department, so I can easily see how he would feel betrayed by opening his copy of the Enterprise, seeing the words “Charged,” “Rape,” “Arrested,” and “Weeks,” all in a story with my byline on it.
We all have jobs to do. I’d like to believe that If a reporter is doing their job, the right way, that they’re not betraying or taking advantage of anyone. People may be hurt by what a reporter writes, but only if they’re in a position where the public has a right to know about the stupid, embarrassing or dangerous things they do. What Deputy Chief Weeks has been accused of doing is a combination all of things, so its our job to report on it, not matter how uncomfortable it might make us, or our sources.
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
