On naming names in juvenile cases

The Daily Bee’s reporting on the last summer’s Sandpoint marina burglaries has raised questions in the community about our policy of identifying juveniles involved in criminal offenses.

As a general rule, we use a juvenile’s name if a judge rules their criminal case open because it is not our charter to obscure or censor the public record.

Our decision to publish a story about a juvenile criminal matter, however, is evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Such stories are generally reserved for serious or violent offenses, or crimes which affect a large number of people.

Contrary to some beliefs in the community, we do not gleefully write such stories, seek to destroy people’s names or use them to drive up readership. We do it to inform the public of what is taking place in their community.

While we acknowledge that juveniles should not necessarily held to the same conduct standards as adults, we also don’t believe they should be given a pass when they commit criminal offenses.

Some have been critical of the paper’s policy of naming names in juvenile cases and argue they should not be used unless they are being tried as adults. We respectfully disagree.

Protecting those accused of wrongdoing against their fellow community members is not a worthy precedent to set.

If anybody is worthy of protection in a news story it is the victims, not the alleged perpetrators.

The best way to stay out of the police blotter — and this applies to adults as well — is to avoid committing criminal offenses.

There are some who will also attempt to argue that The Bee gravitates toward the negative things juveniles do rather than positive things.

Our record, however, speaks for itself. The number of stories about kids doing good are numerous and frequent, while the number of stories of about them doing bad are few and rare.

Our policy is not cast in stone and we are open to suggestions. What are your thoughts?

Keith Kinnaird is the news editor of The Daily Bee