This is my letter to the Q&A address, with cc's to two other key MPA personnel. I'll be curious as to their response.<p>------------------------------<p>To Whom It May Concern:<p>I'm a former reporter and editor at a handful of Michigan papers, and I still read the MPA bulletin.<p>I must say, I was taken aback by your answer to the Q&A-section question that someone posed in the Jan. 23 bulletin. I found your views on "accurate" reporting to be appalling, and believe you should submit a retraction.<p>The question was straightforward enough: Is it a OK to say, "Police say he murdered somebody"? Is a breaking-and-entering a "burglary"?<p>The answers to both these questions are in the AP Stylebook, and I'm surprised the answer just didn't refer to it. Yes, calling a B&E a burglary is OK, although B&E would be more accurate (a burglary by definition does not necessarily imply a forced entry). But no, it is *not* OK to say, "Police say he murdered somebody." You *never* call someone a murderer before a conviction on that charge. And even if you're not pointing a finger at someone specifically, you shouldn't say something like "The victim was murdered" unless the cops say the killing was obviously premeditated - and those cases are pretty rare.<p>Instead, the MPA answer says, "You can use murder instead of homicide" because a term like murder is a term "that readers understand." Incredible! Labeling a crime something it's not is acceptable in Michigan newspapers now? I just don't know how you can justify inaccurate reporting with such an egregiously specious rationalization as "readers understand" the word "murder." And please, don't tell me the courts have said it's OK. Even if that's the case, papers should not take it as a license to practice sloppy journalism.<p>As troubling as your answer to the "murder" question was, you really stretched the limits of credibility when you said that reporting a theft of $10,000 as one of $100,000 was still "substantially true." If being off by "only" a factor of 10 is "substantially true" reporting, then what about factors of 100? A thousand? If a paper writes that someone stole $100,000 when he in fact stole $100, is this still "substantially true" as long as the paper called it "theft"? Court action or no, any reporter at every newspaper I'm familiar with would have a lot of explaining to do if he reported a $10,000 theft as a $100,000 one.<p>But the incest example really took the cake. No, you *cannot* say someone molested his stepdaughter 56 times when the stepdaughter testified to only three instances. Fifty-six does not equal 3; spare me the Orwellian logic that both are "substantially true" - even if the stepfather is acquitted!<p>All six paragraphs of this answer to an innocuous queston seemed to provide a license for inaccurate reporting, as long as you can get away with it in court. This is sending a terrible message. You should be ashamed.<p>Regards, Gary K.
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