Report of Rapes Posed Dilemma for Media

Developing coverage Thursday of the kidnapping of two teenage girls posed a dilemma for media outlets across the country, when reports from the Kern County sheriff expanded the story from one of abduction to include rape.

That information suddenly changed the rules for many outlets, including The Times, that have a policy against publishing the names of sexual assault victims.

The girls’ names, ages and photographs--one in her cheerleading uniform and the other dressed for a formal--already had appeared on Web sites and television shows for most of the day. Their names had been mentioned “on every top-of-the-hour broadcast in the country,” said Ray Lopez, producer of the talk-radio program “The John & Ken Show” on KFI-AM (640).

“The problem is that they put out their names in the media to help find them. There’s no way we could protect the names, even though they might have been rape victims,” he said.

National Public Radio has a policy to “err on the side of not using the names of rape victims, particularly underage rape victims,” said Bruce Drake, vice president for news. “But this story has developed in a way most don’t develop. Their names were out there, we were already on the air naming their names. Then the sheriff goes on national TV and says they were raped. There is no way not to connect the dots.”

By late Thursday night, most television networks and affiliates said they had independent confirmation from the Sheriff’s Department that the girls had been raped, and they took down the photos and refrained from again naming them.

The developments got bogged down on some Web sites.

NBC, MSNBC and KNBC-TV (Channel 4) ran updated stories on their Web sites with the allegations of rape, but still used large photos at 8:30 p.m., more than 90 minutes after other networks had alerted their television and radio stations to back down.

“Our Web site is an independent company, and usually we’re right in sync with them,” said Kimberly Godwin, vice president news director at KNBC-TV.

Some media outlets had a more streamlined process for pulling back. ABC News issued a “kill” bulletin three minutes after it learned that authorities said the girls had been raped, prohibiting any outlets and affiliates from using the names or images. CNN did the same thing, although the network couldn’t pull pre-taped shows that would re-air overnight with photographs of the girls.

In what can only be described as hedging its bets, once Fox News Channel confirmed the sheriff’s comment, they replaced the portraits with “far away” video of the girls’ homecoming that showed them from the side, said spokesman Rob Zimmerman.