Are cuts in US investigative reporting leading to lack of justice for those on death row?

Posted by Emma Heald on May 22, 2009 at 11:47 AM

New York Times journalist Tim Arango has written about how shrinking newsrooms in the US have caused concern among lawyers fighting for the lives of prisoners on death row. When newsrooms were flourishing, lawyers would often offer case outlines to reporters who would then unearth evidence and pursue witnesses. This led to "a spate of exonerations" in which the work of journalists was key.

Now, many fewer cases are being followed by journalists, which means that lawyers have to do a lot more of the work themselves, and in some cases, it just does not get done. In particular, in the US, a "novel legal theory" exists that allows news organisations access to physical records and allows members of the press to appear as plaintiffs. Death penalty opponents fear that reduced newsroom resources will mean that newspapers will not be able to dedicate time and effort to locating DNA evidence to show that innocent people have been executed, for example.

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project in New York, which is affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, described the lack of investigative journalists as "extremely troubling." He explained that "when procedural mechanisms begin to fail, the press is the last resort for the public to find out the truth."

Arango mentions a case in Tennessee, where doubts exist about the guilt of a man executed in 2006 for rape and murder. Evidence that may support his defence exists, but remains untested because the Innocence Project has not been able to recruit a local media organisation to become a plaintiff.

Some news organisations are reluctant to collaborate too closely with lawyers because they fear blurring the line "between advocate and objective collector of the news." Maurice Possley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who wrote many death penalty and wrongful convictions stories while at the Chicago Tribune said "my feeling always was we should do it on our own." He would not want his readers to think that he has a bias or an agenda.

Decreasing journalistic resources does mean that reporters are likely to be given less time for long investigative pieces, and indeed that the lawyers' worries might be justified and fewer wrongful convictions will be overturned. Possley commented that journalists now are more likely to want the easy stories that are "packaged with a bow," rather than having to track down evidence themselves. Some outlets have sprung up to help fill the gaps in public interest investigative reporting, such as ProPublica or the VoiceOfSanDiego, but these non-profit initiatives can only do so much, especially as newspapers continue to suffer and some US cities are left with only one main daily. What can be done to preserve investigative reporting?

Source: New York Times