What’s the problem with a published mugshot? Often it results in a damaged reputation
Mugshots often picture scruffy people who scowl at the camera. This is the police ID photo. When you see one in a newspaper, magazine or on television, you can bet the subject has been charged with a crime. That is because the prosecutor’s charge is a public record.
(With few exceptions, The Kansas City Star does not post mugshots of those arrested, as doing so has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities.)
Now anybody can publish the photo, and report the accused’s supposed crime, without danger of being sued. Historically, the media has done it frequently.
I did it 66 years ago as a part-time journalist still in college shooting news film for KVOO-TV (now KJRH-TV) in Tulsa. A young woman accused of killing her husband was being led by deputies along a courthouse hallway toward her arraignment. I caught her in the viewfinder of my Bell and Howell 16-millimeter camera and pressed the button. She heard the grinding sound, glanced up in horror, jerked free and fled the other way.
The woman had been charged, of course, but not convicted. I had no idea whether she was guilty. But we put that footage on the air. Two weeks later, the news director wanted film of the woman’s preliminary hearing. I refused to take it and quit the job, later enjoying a lengthy career in journalism while struggling to avoid repeating that scenario.
What prompts this recital now is a police mugshot I saw a more than a year ago of man I know. Perhaps I’m biased. I once stood by passively while he — at some risk to his life — scooted 30 yards across a frozen lake toward a hole in the ice and yanked out a floundering dog, otherwise doomed to drown.
I do not specify the supposed crime and the supposed perpetrator because that published mugshot of the man, his days in jail, the bail he paid to get out, lawyer fees and all his suffering since have done him enough damage. I do not want to make it worse.
Most importantly, I do not specify these facts because the prosecutor, after lengthy investigation, dismissed the charges against him. Even that will neither end his pain nor restore the reputation damaged by his mugshot.
After a career in journalism, plus teaching the skill, I have a high opinion of we who practice it. My best friend, J. Harry Jones, wrote Kansas City Star stories about the Cosa Nostra here and that group’s influence from the 1930s through the 1970s on local politics. Leaving the office near midnight on Saturdays, he often checked for bombs under his car hood before driving off. Star journalists covering Civil Rights in the 1960s and ’70s sometimes picked up their telephones at night to hear death threats from callers.
Seven years ago, when I was asked to write this monthly column, The Kansas City Star required me to sign a strict code of ethics, one that would do much to repair today’s warped U. S. Supreme Court, where some justices take free gifts from litigants involved in cases before them. What I’m saying here is that we journalists are decent people.
On this issue I suggest an addition to our code of ethics. If the perpetrator is the president of the United States charged with trying to overthrow the government, go ahead. Publish his mugshot. Publish the accusations. On matters of wide concern involving public issues and public officials, broadcast it all — and later fully correct the errors if they turn out to be wrong.
If the evidence is overwhelming even against private people, publish that, also. Certainly publish the outcome of every important case, guilty or innocent, when the evidence has been considered and the verdict is final.
But we should not routinely destroy the reputations of ordinary people only because the bare criminal charge is a public record, even if we can do so legally. We should be better than that.
Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.
This story was originally published August 23, 2023 at 5:00 AM.