The Editor's Desk

A friend and attorney for the family of David Wessling sent The Eagle a very thoughtful e-mail in response to our post about how we
decided to report the cause of Mr. Wessling’s death in a story last week. He has given us
permission to share it here.

Dear Ms. Werts,

I am Kevin Holloway, a close friend and attorney for the Wessling family. I want to thank you for your sensitive and sensible explanation of your editorial decision in disclosing the cause of death of Mr. Wessling.

Late Thursday afternoon Mrs. Wessling, myself and a representative of the school district had a long discussion as to whether we should allow the district to disclose the cause of death.

Although it was a painful decision, we were in unanimous agreement that the truth would be beneficial and healing for the family, the faculty, and most particularly all the current and former students that David loved so much.

Although not specifically discussed, we were all surely aware and comfortable with the fact that once the district had permission to disclose the cause of death, the information would be a matter of public record and would surely be reported.

I would like to personally commend you for that fact that the reporting in your online edition made no such disclosure until many hours after we had consented to the release of the information.

At a time when the media is under much criticism, it is refreshing to know that thoughtful decisions are made after careful consideration.

I can think of no larger loss to the community than to think that editorial decisions would be made by mindless adherence to a rigid set of rules.

Once again thank you for publishing your explanation and take pride in the fact that you reached the correct decision.

Kevin R. Holloway
Attorney at Law

A reader dropped me a note over the
weekend asking how we make decisions on whether a source will be anonymous. Her
note was in reference to our front-page story Sunday, reporting that since 2001,
someone had reported eight times to a state agency that two small girls were
being abused or neglected. The detailed information about the eight reports was attributed to an unnamed source.

Deciding whether to use an anonymous
source is one of the hardest – if not the hardest – decisions we have to make in
the newsroom. In recent years, The Eagle has substantially reduced the instances
in which we use anonymous sources.

We
have some inflexible rules about anonymous sources: Use of an anonymous source must be approved by me
or by Managing Editor Theresa Johnson, the No. 2 editor in the newsroom.
Reporters cannot grant a source anonymity without consulting with their editor,
who must talk with me or Theresa to determine whether we think the
circumstances are so extraordinary that they require
it.

Also, Theresa or I (or both) must
know who the source is.

After that, it’s not so
black-and-white. I have a series of questions I generally ask the reporter – why
does the source want to be anonymous? If his or her safety would be threatened
if their identity were published, that would often sway me to agree to
anonymity. Sometimes, a person might likely lose his/her job, and that’s an
important factor.

Other issues are whether we might be able to get the
information from another source who would agree to be named. And it also depends
on what the story is – if the development is not of substantial public interest,
we’re likely to decide we just won’t publish it unless we can get the information elsewhere from a named source. If the story is a matter of
significant public interest, we’d weigh that heavily in determining whether to
go with a story with an anonymous source.

If Theresa or I agree that a source
should be anonymous, we ask the reporter to try hard to get at least one more source to confirm the
story. In fact, it’s rare that we would report a story based on an anonymous,
single source. And we would only do so if we were extremely confident in that
source’s information.

Sources ask us nearly every day to
be anonymous. Often, their reasoning is simply that they don’t want their name
in the newspaper. I can usually understand their hesitancy.

But the fact is that
anonymous sources can harm The Eagle’s credibility – and readers have a right to know how we know what we’re reporting. That’s why anonymous
sources have a lengthy series of hurdles to clear before making it into your
newspaper.