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Be careful when identifying suspects by race

When describing a suspected criminal, if the suspect's race is known, it's logical to mention it in an article: black,white, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, etc. However, in doing so, The Bee should limit the description to known facts.

In the article, "Wife of Gas Station Clerk..." (12/30/06, page B1), an unidentified shooting suspect was videotaped by a security camera. The suspect is described as "Southeast Asian." How can someone possibly determine that an unknown person is "Southeast Asian" by looking at a film or photograph? If anyone is able to do that, he should tell the police the suspect's name, as well.

If The Bee, or any local news source, were to describe a suspect as "Samoan," "Mexican," "Bolivian," "French" or "Nigerian," based solely on appearance, you can imagine the community's outcry! This sort of thing adds to/reinforces negative stereotypes.

Terry Peyton
Sanger, CA



Generally, we seek to provide detailed descriptions of suspected criminals. Last week, we failed to follow our own guidelines and allowed a vague description to slip into two stories about the shooting of a gas-station clerk. (The first story published Dec. 29, followed by the Dec. 30 story noted here.)

When we do use a vague description, our goal is to provide the extra details necessary for the reader to understand context. For example, when we wrote Dec. 27 about a shooting at a Fresno motel and police gave a vague description of the suspect -- "Southeast Asian" -- we also noted: "Police declined to provide more details of the suspect, citing conflicting witness descriptions."

Answered by at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

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