How Media Reports on Crime Podcast

Coming in late today, what the FBI has now revealed in the Gabby Petito case, what they now say they discovered in Brian Laundrie's notebook. Friendly market store in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo, the alleged shooter wearing full body armor and tactical gear, targeting people of color. Rosetta Everhart's 20-year-old son, Zahir Goodman, worked at Topps and was helping an older woman with her groceries in the parking lot. He was shot in the neck, but the bullet didn't cause major damage. I've protected him his whole life from the ills of the world, and here we have a man, a terrorist, who came into my community, into our neighborhood, yeah. In order to take a deeper dive into how exactly the media reports on crime, I have with me today Patrick Smith. Patrick worked as a crime reporter in Baltimore County, Maryland, for the Dundalk Eagle. He has also worked for the United States Senate as a Deputy Press Secretary, organizing many events with the Senate. Patrick also worked for the American Red Cross as a Communications Manager. He currently works as a Senior Communications Specialist for Johns Hopkins Medicine. He is very knowledgeable, qualified, and has a lot of experience in the field of media and reporting. With that being said, I'd like to welcome Patrick. So you're at High Point, is that right? Yeah. Cool. That's great. How's it going? It's been really fun. Yeah. I definitely got the right pick on school. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. That's cool. Yeah. I went to East Carolina. I'm a North Carolinian. I went to ECU forever and ever ago. But, yeah. Well, I'd like to start by asking what exactly got you into reporting and the media field as a whole? Yeah. That's a good question. I was, as a kid, I was always, as a kid in North Carolina, in Raleigh, North Carolina, I was always really fascinated with newspapers. We got the News & Observer every morning. I always just, it always blew my mind that I could go to bed at, I don't know, 10 o'clock at night or something, and all the things that happened while I was asleep would be, or a lot of the things that happened while I was asleep would be in a newspaper. I mean, that sounds really kind of antique now, but it just was incredible that you could just open your door and pick up your paper, and there's all the scores from last night, all the latest news, and that kind of stuff. So that's just, so then, you know, and I was, I always was interested in writing, so it just was natural that I'd go to newspapers. Right. That sounds like a perfect fit for you. And also, when you actually write up your report, especially one that maybe has sort of a controversial tinge to it, is there anything you do to bring out that controversial piece or any, like, wording you use? Yeah. I mean, from time to time, one does have to write stories that could be controversial. You know, I think we, you know, I didn't go to journalism school. I was an English major at East Carolina and at Towson, and I didn't really learn the ethics and the kind of ABCs of journalism in school. I just kind of picked them up when I got to the newspaper. First of all, it's important to have a really good editor to sort of be a guide for, you know, what's inbounds and what's out of bounds. And you know, and then also, I think that, you know, you learn to tell a story or write a story in a way that's really balanced. I mean, you know, you're not trying to impose your own, your own kind of vibe onto the story, you know, or your own opinions. You just kind of, you just have to write it straight. And so if, you know, if you're good at that and you feel like you have a good guide, a good editor to guide you along, I think you can usually deal with controversial topics like crime and that sort of thing, things that have a tendency to kind of divide people a little bit, you know, or that people have strong opinions about. Right. So you mainly focused on getting the sheer facts of the story out rather than trying to bring out a certain feeling towards it. And I was going to piggyback on that. I was going to ask you as well, aside from controversial, if you wanted people to feel maybe in anger or such as like maybe an emotion, if say a child got kidnapped, if you want them to feel that kind of emotion, did you do that as well? Or maybe say you want to bring the like straight story out, but there's anything like that maybe? Yeah. I mean, I think that it's important, it's important for you to let the story speak for itself. And so I think that, I mean, there is a, there's a role for, I believe there's a role for, for emotion and for opinion naturally in, in newspapers, but when you're the reporter, it's really your job to say, you know, the, this, you know, eight year old Hartford County kid was kidnapped on such and such a day. And this, you know, this is what the police said, this is, and if you're lucky, I used to get really lucky and the Baltimore County cops were really good to me. And they used to let me read the police reports and stuff from the night before. So it's really, it's not a great idea to try to make people angry or to make people any, to make people that way. I mean, you have to, they can get there themselves and they can be outraged and feel how they want to feel about the event, but really your job as a journalist is to report it straight. Yeah. Well, I don't, I'd say no. I mean, you, I mean, a kid kidnapped is a really good example because I think if, you know, if you have a photographer with you or if you have to take your own pictures, you know, if there are, you know, here, how in Baltimore city, and you know, you're familiar with the area. If a kid has, has been killed, a lot of times there's a memorial on a, on like a stop sign or the closest sign to it. And there'll be like teddy bears and balloons and stuff like that. Which is absolutely heartbreaking. However, you know, and that's something you can, you can put in the story. I mean, that'd be, that's a really great way I think to illustrate your story and the tragedy behind it. But generally it's, it's best to just kind of let the outrage or the sadness or the whatever that readers are going to feel. Let them, let them come to that naturally on their own. Gotcha. So you would write so that people can form their own response and opinion on it versus maybe use words like monster, killer, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And there are, you know, there are also a lot of legal things around that too. You know what I mean? You know, it's important to say, you know, alleged, you know, and that kind of thing and be very careful that you don't, you don't convict anybody before they even get to court. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you said, they don't always follow that. And that brings me to my next question. Have you ever written an article or story that you've seen an impact from, that you've actually like seen what it, seen a response, seen that it did something? Yeah. I have. And that's, you know, that's really, that's a heavy feeling. I wrote a story about, I was in East Baltimore, an East Baltimore County reporter, and I wrote a story about a time that CNN came to a town in Eastern Baltimore County to write a story about kind of race relations, you know, kind of not, not just because, I mean, if CNN had come to this town to write about, you know, a pumpkin patch or a strawberry festival, I would have covered that. But instead they happened, they happened to come to the town to, to talk about how people do as far as, you know, racial relationships goes. And a lot of politicians, a lot of white politicians got really outraged and, you know, didn't like it and wound up looking pretty bad on TV or, you know, to my mind, they looked pretty bad on TV. And so I wrote this story and I did, again, I mean, that was a tough one because you had to not cloud it with your own, with, with any kind of like sort of moral judgment, right? So there were a couple of quotes in there that these, these politicians made on TV that I called them afterward and said, so what did you mean when you said, you know, what, what you said? And, and they got outraged at like, why am I getting this kind of, why am I getting questions like this from my, my hometown reporter? I mean, this, you know, did not solve the problem, but it definitely aired out the problem of that. That felt really good. There were some other examples, but I think that's a pretty good one. Yeah. And that's probably what, you know, what it's all about for you, seeing like that your work actually had an impact. And I bet that was a great feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Is there anything about the crime reporting that you might want people to know? Like, is there any red flags to look out for when you see the news? Yeah. You know, I think there really are a lot of red flags, particularly around crime. You know, there's, crime has become one of those issues that does elicit really strong opinions one, in one way or the other. So yeah, I mean, I think that looking for sources that aren't just trying to push your buttons, there's just a lot of, in either direction, a lot of news sources that tell you what you want to hear. You know, I have news sources that I trust and read and, you know, that's kind of where I try to, I try to kind of keep away from the other, you know, sort of just noisy outlets. I covered it perfectly. And you also went into it towards the end, my next question about what's your go-to news and which ones do you avoid? You know, I learned in the communications business after I left reporting that television news reporters, particularly local television news reporters, they get their news from the newspaper. So it's really the print, what used to be the print journalism, now it's online print journalism. So I stick pretty much with that. I read the Washington Post, I read the Baltimore Sun, I read the Baltimore Banner every day and I also read a lot of the New York Times. But those are, that's where I go. And you know, for television, you know, I don't want to totally disparage all of television, but television has a slightly different goal, I think. Television needs you to keep, you know, television stations and networks and particular broadcast need you to keep watching. It's hard to trust an outlet that has quite those motivations. Great. That's all I had for you. So I'd like to thank you quite a bit. I really appreciate you coming on and you had some great points. Awesome. You can tell that you're very passionate and knowledgeable and found the right career. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Wes. Yeah, it's, I think that, you know, it's really, it's a really important topic and it's awesome to get to talk with you about it. You know, news and news doesn't get reported magically, you know, there are some unbelievably brave people, whether they're print journalists or TV journalists, like in Ukraine right now, you know, on the front lines of the war who are reporting that kind of thing or incredibly brave people covering our Justice Department or, you know, all the things that get covered. It's just, it's just, it isn't magic. It's a lot of work and there's a lot of pushing and shoving and sharp elbows, but it's, it's such a keystone of our democracy that I just think it's, when we lose that, I'm afraid that our country's in trouble. So that's why I'm so passionate about it. Well, as we just heard from Patrick, if a news station follows good practice, you shouldn't hear very many trigger words. He also highlighted throughout his experience that it is in this good practice that news outlets should cover events from a neutral stance, just reporting on what happened and not how they feel about it. And as our time comes to an end, I wanted to ask you this, what are your thoughts on how a crime is reported in the media? How have different stories impacted you? And lastly, where have you seen discrepancies in how events are reported? Once again, I'd like to thank Patrick Smith. You truly fit the theme of today's podcast and it was a great addition. This marks the end of today's podcast and I'd like to thank you for listening in.