behind the news

Suspicious in Seattle

Media weigh privacy v. public safety
August 22, 2007

Over the past several weeks, two men have been observed on several different ferries in the Seattle area looking “overly interested in the workings and layout” of the ferries, according to the FBI. In alerting the public to the threat of men casing the ferry system for a possible future attack (the Seattle area ferry system’s vulnerably to a terrorist attack has long been a worry for public officials), the FBI released photos of the two men to the public.

This creates a problem for journalists. Since the men haven’t done anything wrong, and aren’t being hunted down for questioning related to any crime, should newspapers and television news outlets show pictures of the two, in the interest of public safety? The FBI has already released their images after all, so how should producers and editors handle the situation?

These are tough questions, and have been answered in different ways by different press mediums. CNN and Fox News have splashed the images of the two anonymous, and at this point innocent, men across the nation’s television screens, delivering ominous-sounding reports about the “suspicious” activities the two have allegedly been engaged in. For newspapers though, it looks like a different calculus is at work.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been very publicly struggling with what to do about the pictures. In a story this morning, the paper says that it “elected not to publish the photos, citing civil liberties and privacy concerns, which editors felt outweighed the newsworthiness of the images. ‘We have no confirmation that these men’s behavior was anything but innocuous, and to forever taint them by associating them with terrorism under these circumstances is not consistent with our policy,’ said David McCumber, P-I managing editor.”

McCumber also blogged yesterday that “running a photograph of two men who may as easily be tourists from Texas as terrorists from the Mideast with a story that makes them out to be persons of interest in a terrorism investigation seems problematic, to say the least.”

Is the Seattle P-I right? Or do CNN and Fox and the conservative blogs that are falling over themselves to post the men’s pictures have the right idea? The argument that infringing on a person’s privacy (like, say, splashing their picture all over the national news) in the name of possibly saving lives obviously has its merits, especially considering that the ferry system has long been considered a prime target for terrorists. But let’s not forget that these two men haven’t done anything wrong. They’ve obviously aroused the suspicions of several people, but for all we know they could be engineering students. But maybe not.

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Reading the comments under the P-I story and blog post, it looks like many commenters want the paper to run the photos. And considering that CNN and Fox as well as the local Seattle news programs have all run the photos of the two men, what is the reason for the paper to keep holding out?

Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.