Determination 119: Rice County Attorney Jeffrey Thompson and the Hanlon Family v. Faribault Daily News
Attending the hearing were the complainants, Jeffrey Thompson, Rice County Attorney and Assistant County Attorney Noah Cashman, and the Hanlon Family: Donna (mother), Casey, Kelly, and Katie (children) and the children’s uncle, Dan Hanlon. Representing the Faribault Daily News were Lisa Schwarz, managing editor, and David Balcom, publisher.
Bob Shaw and Nedra Wicks, former Council members, took part as public members in order to ensure a balance of public/media members. About a dozen people observed the proceedings, which took place at South Central Technical College in Faribault.
Background: On January 27, 1997, 18-year-old Casey Hanlon was stabbed in the chest while standing in the driveway of his uncle Dan’s home, where Casey’s father was residing at the time. Casey recovered, and his assailant was arrested and charged with attempted murder by Rice County Attorney Jeffrey Thompson. A month after the assault Casey’s father died from cancer.
In light of the difficulty of proving premeditated intent to murder and in exchange for his cooperation, Casey’s assailant was allowed to plead guilty to first-degree assault. The family attended all the hearings and accepted the plea.
Donna Hanlon, Casey’s mother, received a call a week lafter the plea hearing from her brother-in-law, Dan, saying that he had just received a call from a woman who identified herself as court personnel and who asked him what he thought of the plea agreement. Since Dan had not attended any of the court hearings, he did not know of the plea agreement, but upon hearing it he gave the opinion that it was “nuts.” The woman asked for Donna’s name and phone number, which Dan gave her. Donna never received a call, but suspected that it was a reporter who had talked with Dan.
The next day, September 3rd, a story appeared on the front page of the Faribault Daily News with the headline: “Attempted Murder Charges Dismissed in Plea Agreement,” with the subhead “Parent of victim says he thinks it’s ‘nuts.’” Kelly Hanlon, Casey’s sister, went to the paper and demanded a correction for the misidentification of Dan Hanlon as their father, which the paper published the next day.
The family was not satisfied with the correction. It was very brief and did not approximate in size or substance other corrections they had seen in the paper for errors they judged to be of a similar magnitude.
In the process of resolving this complaint, the county attorney requested three things:
- That he be allowed to run a training session on court procedures for Daily News staff (which he did conduct on January 21, 1998);
- That he be allowed to write a column on the case for the editorial page, which the paper agreed to publish (but at Thompson’s request had not yet published at the time of the hearing);
- That the paper issue a front-page apology to the Hanlon family, which the paper declined.
The managing editor suggested the family write a letter to the editor, which they did. The letter the family submitted was unacceptable to the paper on several grounds, but the family revised it until only one problem remained: the family charged that the reporter had misrepresented herself as court personnel to Dan Hanlon. The paper said that was libelous and, lacking any evidence to support the claim, refused to publish the letter. With that, the parties reached an impasse and came to a public hearing.
Complaint: The family and the county attorney filed separate complaints about the same story. While the county attorney reports that his office had had numerous problems with this particular reporter, he said he would not have brought a complaint but for the harm it inflicted upon the Hanlon family. He expressed concern, as well, that the article would interfere with prosecution of criminals by undermining the trust of other crime victims in the office of the county attorney.
Thompson charged that the Daily News was unfair to the county attorney’s Office in the way it gathered and reported the story of the plea agreement:
- The first paragraph implied that the police had a confession when in fact the assailant had given an admission in support of a guilty plea;
- The writing style mixed news and opinion. For example, the first paragraph begins “Even though Travis Lee Beckjordan admits stabbing one local boy… prosecutors dismissed a charge of first-degree attempted murder….” implying that it was inappropriate to dismiss the attempted murder charge;
- The story did not explain that the plea bargain was based upon the prosecutor’s sense of the difficulty he would have in proving the assailant’s intent;
- The reporter did not contact the county attorney, the assistant county attorney or any member of the family who was party to the plea agreement before the story appeared;
- The article presented quotes from the judge, defendant and prosecutor in such a way that it seemed the reporter was present in the courtroom; she was not. She was reporting from the court transcripts. Because the reporter was not in court, she did not have all the facts.
The Hanlon family complained that the Daily News was unfair in the way it gathered and reported the story of the plea agreement and that its published correction was an inadequate response to their complaint:
- The reporter did not contact any member of the family who had been involved in the plea agreement and therefore misrepresented the attitude of the family toward the plea agreement (they fully supported the plea agreement);
- The reporter misrepresented herself when she spoke with the uncle, saying she was court personnel;
- The story inaccurately identified Casey’s uncle as his father, when in fact his father had recently died from cancer;
- The small, page-two correction was insufficient given the trauma the family suffered from the misrepresentation and in light of Page-One corrections and apologies the paper had given to people in other cases.
The text of the correction that ran on September 4 read:
In a story on page 1 of the Wednesday, Sept. 3 edition of the Daily News, Dan Hanlon’s relationship to Casey Hanlon was misstated. Dan Hanlon is Casey Hanlon’s uncle.
The Daily News regrets the error.
Response: The Daily News admits that the story misidentified Casey Hanlon’s uncle as his father,. Managing Editor Lisa Schwarz apologized in person to Kelly Hanlon when she came to the newspaper office, and the paper corrected the error the next day in accordance with its policy and past practices.
The paper says that previous stories misidentified the location of the crime as the father’s home and no one pointed out that error. When the reporter called that address and reached a Mr. Hanlon, she assumed it was the victim’s father.
The paper did not issue a front-page apology because the length of time between the publication of the original story and the requested apology would have necessitated providing context and repeating the error that caused the family such distress. It is the paper’s policy not to repeat errors.
Discussion: “How could you let him off after he tried to kill your son?” That was the response Donna Hanlon said she encountered from everyone she met for many weeks after the article appeared. She said people didn’t understand what the issues were or that she and her children were intimately involved in the court case.
Donna Hanlon said no one from the paper ever contacted her or any of the children to get their opinion about the plea bargain. She questioned why the reporter would quote Dan Hanlon when he obviously was uninformed of events: he had told the reporter he wasn’t in court and didn’t know of the plea bargain.
Council members asked Dan Hanlon exactly how the person identified herself; he said he couldn’t remember exactly but that she said she was with the court system, that she never once mentioned the Daily News.
Schwarz said she had never before received a complaint about the reporter misrepresenting herself and she didn’t believe it had happened. She said she asked the reporter about it, and the reporter denied it. Schwarz said she could find no evidence to support Dan Hanlon’s charge. She said all reporters at the paper are trained to properly identify themselves and to say they are from the Daily News.
Public member Laurisa Sellers asked Schwarz if it was usual for a reporter to quote from a court transcript as if the reporter were actually at the event. Schwarz said reporters cover many beats and can’t always be in court. She did not believe the writing style was inappropriate or unusual.
Bauerlein asked the county attorney if the reporter had called him for comment. Assistant County Attorney Cashman said there was a call from the reporter on his answering machine when he got home at 8:30 p.m. on September 2 but the message didn’t say what she was calling about or mention a deadline. He didn’t return her call that night. He didn’t work on Sept. 3, but saw the headline in the paper that day. He tried to call the reporter on the 4th when he got back to work.
Thompson said the plea hearing took place on August 27th so they would have no reason to suspect the reporter was calling about that hearing. He questioned the need to publish the story so quickly - before the relevant parties had an opportunity to give comment - given that the hearing had taken place eight days earlier.
Schwarz said it typically took a week for a court transcript to become available, so the reporter was writing her story at the first opportunity. Thompson denied that, saying that the reporter could have talked to the court reporter and, if there were great public interest, could have secured the transcript within a few days. And any time during the intervening seven days she could have called the county attorney’s office for comment.
Media member Trish Van Pilsum asked Schwarz what she thought of the correction. Schwarz said any inaccuracy is a big deal and the paper had responded promptly and fairly when notified of the error. She said Page 2 is arguably the most read page of the paper: it contains corrections, lottery numbers and obits. Van Pilsum asked if she considered including the immediate family’s opinion of the plea agreement in the correction. Schwarz said no, she did not consider doing so.
Schwarz said after she apologized to Kelly Hanlon and made the correction, the paper did not hear from the family again for some time, until it received a letter from the county attorney. By that time the issue was no longer in the public eye and to publish a more substantial correction would have required including context and repeating the error, which is against paper policy. Schwarz said that if the paper had known earlier that the family was not satisfied, it could have done more.
Thompson said the complaint about the September 3 article was filed on October 8 and a luncheon meeting between the parties was scheduled for October 28. On October 25 the paper ran a story about the sentencing of the assailant; the paper did not use that opportunity to provide more context.
Schwarz said she felt the proper place to handle the family’s complaint was behind the scenes.
Public member Craig Shulstad asked why the family had the county attorney contact the paper. Donna Hanlon said she asked for his help. She said she had scheduled meetings with Schwarz several times and for various reasons they were canceled. Public member Neil Neddermeyer asked Thompson why he complained about this story and not about the many previous stories that Thompson contended were erroneous. Thompson said he had complained to the paper before, he had written commentaries and had repeatedly asked that reporters contact his office for information.
Cashman pointed to the repeated error identifying the location of the stabbing as the “family home,” when the plea hearing transcript (which the reporter worked from when she wrote her story) clearly stated it was the uncle’s home where the father was living after he separated from his wife.
Deliberation: “If I were an editor, I would’ve asked the reporter, ‘Did you contact the family?’” said media member Dave Hage. “It was a grievous error (misidentifying the uncle), but it appears the reporter tried to contact the family. ‘Did you try to contact the county attorney’s office?’ If the answer is no… you need to make a greater effort to contact them.”
Sellers said she was troubled by the first-hand-account quality of the reporting, but understood why the paper would want to use the livelier style of direct quotes.
Council members discussed the possible misrepresentation, but made no definitive statement since there was no evidence either way. They affirmed that the paper was responsible for its reporter’s behavior.
As to the apology, Council members felt it was inadequate. “The paper was obligated to ask the right family members, ‘What do you really think?’” said Van Pilsum.
“We do our duty by publishing corrections like these, but it does very little to make the community involved feel better,” said Bauerlein.
Determination: 1. On the question, “Was the Faribault Daily News unfair to the Hanlon family in the gathering and reporting of the September 3, 1997 story about the plea agreement?” the Council voted to sustain the complaint.
Concurring: Bauerlein, Hage, Neddermeyer, Pumarlo, Sellers, Shaw, Shulstad, Stauffer, Van Pilsum, Wicks
Dissenting: Bailey
Recused: Keller
Presiding: Tomljanovich
2. On the question, “Was the Faribault Daily News unfair to the Rice County Attorney’s Office in the gathering and reporting of the September 3, 1997 story about the plea agreement?” the Council voted to sustain the complaint.
Concurring: Hage, Pumarlo, Sellers, Shaw, Shulstad, Stauffer, Van Pilsum, Wicks
Dissenting: Bailey, Bauerlein, Neddermeyer
Recused: Keller
Presiding: Tomljanovich
3. On the question, “Was the Faribault Daily News’ published correction an inadequate response to the Hanlon family’s complaint?” the Council voted tosustain the complaint.
Concurring: Bailey, Bauerlein, Hage, Pumarlo, Sellers, Shaw, Shulstad, Stauffer, Van Pilsum, Wicks
Dissenting: Hage, Neddermeyer
Recused: Keller
Presiding: Tomljanovich
Tags: Faribault Daily News