Journalists Love Cops


June 21, 2002


MIKE PESCA: We're back with On the Media. I'm Mike Pesca, in for Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. On Monday the Chicago Sun-Times felt it necessary to declare once and for all this earth-shattering revelation: "Newspapers are not natural enemies of law enforcement." The paper's editors were defending their decision to hand over to police a videotape they received allegedly showing R&B singer R. Kelly having sex with a 14 year old. This, quote, "official cooperation" prompted some journalists and media ethicists to wave the yellow caution flag. A newspaper's credibility, they argue, depends on a lack of ties with the institutions they cover. Joining us now is John Cruickshank, the Chicago Sun-Times' vice president of editorial. John, welcome to OTM!

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: Thanks, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, no judge subpoenaed you, no cops pressured you. Why when you got this tape in the mail did you give this documentation of illegal activity to the police?

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: You know it's so much easier to do the right thing when there's nobody subpoenaing you. We did it because we were sitting on evidence. We felt it was important to get that in front of the authorities.

BOB GARFIELD:The editorial used the analogy if the gun used in a murder showed up in the mail that you would have taken a picture of it and then called the police. In other words behaving like any citizen encountering evidence of a crime. Why are people nervous about that?

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: Well I think something you said in your introduction is something that clearly we have to avoid, and that is having links or ties. But that's not what this is about. Part of our mission as one of the fundamental institutions in this country is to do justice and see justice is done. So we don't have a natural opposition to the other institutions that are also involved in doing justice. Nor though do we have a continuing link with them. We play a different role in society and sometimes that means we bump heads with the court and with the cops. But there also are circumstances where we can just be good citizens and not have to fear about suborned in any way by others.

BOB GARFIELD:Let's talk about that, because certainly if the district attorney's office wanted to subpoena notes that one of your reporters had made of an interview with someone that the district attorney was interested in, your mission to help society at large would not cause you to immediately surrender those notes. I suspect that quite the opposite, you would go to every length to protect them from the authorities, would you not?

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: Absolutely, because in our view, that's when the attorney is acting inappropriately. He's trying to invade a sphere which we think we have constitutional protection to operate in.

BOB GARFIELD: I'm just curious. This videotape, it arrived anonymously, right?

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: Yeah.

BOB GARFIELD: Had it been delivered by a source who asked to be protected, would you still have sent it to the police?

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: You know that's a hypothetical that, that happily I don't need to explore.

BOB GARFIELD:Well this year, earlier this year, one of your reporters refused to appear in court as a prosecution witness for a crime committed by someone that your reporter had written about. If you're making the case that you as a civic institution have a citizen's duty to cooperate, why didn't this guy testify?

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: I think that was a case where we were being asked inappropriately to cozy up. That wasn't the role that we -- that we were required or should have rightfully played in that case. We had fulfilled our responsibility in our reporting.

BOB GARFIELD:i have to say that I had no difficulty with you turning this over. Seemed like a clear cut move to me as well, but it does strike me that at some point when you do try to fight an issue of prior restraint or try to keep law enforcement from subpoenaing something that you have, that this could conceivably come back to bite you in the rear.

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: I don't think so. There is something kind of unique about this, and I go back to the analogy of the murder weapon turning up in our news room. You don't take the photograph and throw the gun away. You take the photograph, you publish the photograph of the murder weapon, but you also send the murder weapon along to the police -- because it's physical evidence. The tape we got we felt was also physical evidence, and evidence that as far as we understood the police altogether lacked before we provided it.

BOB GARFIELD: John Cruickshank, thanks very much.

JOHN CRUICKSHANK: Thanks, Bob. Great to talk to you.

BOB GARFIELD: John Cruickshank is the editorial vice president of the Chicago Sun-Times.