Media Sport: Trashing of the Innocent

So many victims in the news this week: slain Polly Klaas, gunned-down Oxnard cop James E. O’Brien, slaughtered commuters in New York. . . .

And James Elliott Singletary.

Singletary still has his life, at least, though not his reputation. That may be indelibly stained. Arrested and booked last Friday night in connection with a spate of youth molestations in the San Fernando Valley, he is a classic example of an innocent citizen getting abused by an overzealous media. Abused big time.

On Tuesday, Singletary was cleared and released without being charged. He was exonerated by the Los Angeles Police Department, but only after being identified for several days in some television newscasts and named as a suspect in a story on the front page of this newspaper’s Valley section (“Encino Man Held in Serial Child Molestations”).

Victims’ rights are an increasing concern of Americans, and properly so. Yet Singletary’s plight affirms that victims come in many categories.

Whether police in Van Nuys should have arrested him in the first place is a separate issue, as is their behavior toward him when they had him in custody (Singletary charged that he was “treated like a dog”). Under growing public pressure while investigating this much reported case that has terrorized many Valley residents, police said Singletary, a 45-year-old African American, fit a police composite drawing of the serial molester, drove a car the same color as one said to be driven by the offender and was observed “loitering and cruising” near a school.

Singletary’s wife said by phone late Wednesday that neither she nor her husband felt up to commenting on his experience. But Singletary had said earlier that police “would pay” for what happened to him, and a member of his family insisted on TV this week that police owed the released man “a big apology.”

True or not, the media owe him a bigger one.

Televised arrests are the very underpinnings of “Cops” and similar “reality” series that desensitize viewers to the privacy rights of suspects who may never be formally charged with the crimes they’re linked with on the screen.

Even when police booked Singletary (who was to become the fourth man arrested in the case without being charged), they publicly cautioned--and the press reported--that he may not be their man and that the actual molester could still be at large.

In other words, even they weren’t certain he was the right guy.

Thus, although police maintained that they had to reveal Singletary’s name in response to a press inquiry because it was public record, there was absolutely no excuse for the media publicly naming him, thereby irrevocably linking Singletary and “molestation” despite his well-covered release.

Perhaps Singletary eventually would have put himself into the spotlight by coming forward to protest being arrested. But that should have been his decision, not the media’s.

To their credit, most local stations splashily covered Singletary’s exoneration, and The Times gave it front-page prominence Wednesday with a detailed story that reported Singletary to be an epileptic anti-drug activist and born-again Christian whose family members said police did not ask them until Monday whether he had an alibi.

TV footage of Singletary running to his waiting family outside the Van Nuys Courthouse lockup, then collapsing on the pavement, was heartbreaking. His emotions poured out: “Oh, God, thank you! Thank you!” Later, he held his 8-year-old daughter in his arms, wondering aloud how anyone could believe he could harm children.

The media are often faulted for giving more publicity to arrests of suspects than to their releases, a charge that could not be made in this instance. Yet even this wide reporting of Singletary’s liberation--the dramatic pictures and expansive newspaper coverage--curiously seemed to drag him still deeper into the case. In reporting his release Wednesday morning, moreover, KCBS-TV Channel 2 said Singletary was “apparently” exonerated, the qualifying adjective lingering like a smear that can’t be erased.

Late that day, KNBC-TV Channel 4 reported another incident that police said may have been connected to the serial molestations. They were shown taking into a custody a man who that same evening was cleared of suspicion and not officially booked in this case.

You could argue that there was no valid reason for showing the arrest at all. Yet at least the man was not identified, and Channel 4 electronically blurred his appearance, precautions that came too late to help James Elliott Singletary.

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The Michael Beat: On Thursday, the day after La Toya Jackson used global television to lob more innuendo at her embattled brother, Michael, NBC’s “Today” weighed in with its own live (in the East) interview of her from Tel Aviv.

On Wednesday, La Toya implied that Michael had paid off the families of young boys to keep them quiet and said she could no longer remain a “silent collaborator of his crimes against small innocent children.”

But “Today” co-host Katie Couric got La Toya to admit that she had no evidence that her brother had sexually molested young boys. And concerning those alleged payoff checks she had referred to on Wednesday, La Toya acknowledged, “I don’t know what they were for.”

Meanwhile, La Toya twice blurted out the first name of the 13-year-old who has accused Michael of sexual molestation, and “Today” did not bother to bleep her for the taped version of the show that airs outside of the Eastern time zone.

After the interview, Couric’s supposedly fair and objective co-host, Bryant Gumbel, added to the carnival by instantly transforming himself into a self-righteous arbiter of truth. “She’s pathetic, isn’t she?” he said about La Toya to Couric, who looked stunned.

Couric refused to be provoked by Gumbel, who wasn’t through with La Toya. “She really craves attention,” he said. Thanks to “Today,” that’s exactly what she got.