Mark McCormick’s column today is a sickening story about convenience store shoppers who stepped over a dying woman who had been stabbed, on their way to paying for purchases. One even stopped to snap a photo with her cell phone.
Police said.
We should have used those words today. Police officials described this scene to Mark from the store’s videotape. Mark wasn’t able to see the video — he asked to see it himself, but police officials told him it was part of an ongoing investigation.
Nothing about that is unusual — authorities rarely make evidence public before suspects are arrested and tried in court. But as I told editors in our morning news meeting, it was unclear to readers whether Mark was describing actions he saw on a video, or whether he was reporting police officials’ account of the video.
A basic rule of thumb is that we should always make clear, "Says who?"
– Sherry