EDITORIAL: Perils of a person of interest

A man was detained by police following the mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island on Dec. 13 on the apparent basis of a false tip and then was released when it became obvious he had nothing to do with the crime. He was freed from custody but not from the stigma that followed him out of the police station door and will haunt his reputation far longer than the 24 hours he was held for questioning.

The victim of this injustice is a 24-year-old man from Cedarburg. Among the actors responsible for it are members of law enforcement agencies and media organizations. Their offense, a violation of standards of conduct for both professions, was making the man’s identity public as a “person of interest” in connection with a heinous crime.

The man’s identity was revealed to news media by an anonymous law enforcement source, an act that was the equivalent of posting his name in six-foot-high letters on electronic billboards across the country.

The Washington Post, once an exemplar of journalistic ethics, was one of the first to publish the Cedarburg man’s name. Other news organizations—CNN, the major TV networks and some other respected newspapers—piled on, adding to what quickly became a subject of speculation, conspiracy theorizing and expressed repugnance on social media platforms. 

In a virtual instant, millions of Americans knew the identity of a man connected to a mass shooting by being named a person of interest, a term that is generally taken to mean a suspect in a crime investigation. 

The person-of-interest label implies guilt in the minds of many, including influential people who should know better. The Cedarburg School District issued a news release saying it was “devastated” by the tragedy at Brown University “allegedly involving a former Cedarburg student.” The Cedarburg Police Department felt the need to weigh in with a social media post offering condolences over the deaths and injuries caused by the shooting. The statements unintentionally added credibility to perceptions that a member of a Cedarburg family could be responsible for a terrible crime.

It was disappointing that among the news organizations that ignored the principle of responsible journalism holding that private citizens being investigated by police in connection with a crime should not be identified unless they have been officially charged was the daily paper published by USA Today Co. that is widely read in Cedarburg along with the rest of Ozaukee County and the Milwaukee area.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel named the Cedarbug man in a news story, and even after he was released from custody and absolved from any involvement in the crime, published a follow-up story with the headline, “Cedarburg classmate shocked to know person of interest in Brown University shooting.”

The story was prefaced by an editor’s note stating: “The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is no longer naming the former classmate or the person of interest, as the person of interest was neither named a suspect in the shooting nor charged and has been released from custody.”

Yet the news article seemed to reinforce the Cedarburg connection by quoting the former classmate and the police and school district statements.

Meanwhile, the identity of the person remained prominent in the social media sphere, often in posts that did not make a distinction between a person of interest and a guilty person.

FBI director Kash Petal jump-started the social media buzz by posting, soon after the Cedarburg man was detained, that a person of interest was in custody, implying that the crime would soon be solved. 

If Patel’s obvious touting of the agency’s work under his leadership sounded familiar, it was because hours after the Charlie Kirk murder in September he posted that “the subject” responsible for the shooting was in custody. He was wrong about that—no one was in custody—and as former FBI and Justice Department officials have pointed out, he was wrong to comment prematurely on a crime investigation in both instances.

It is hardly surprising that it was widely surmised that the FBI was responsible for the leaked person-of-interest identity in the Brown University murder case.

The net effect of the accumulated acts of disregard for the principle of the presumption of innocence is that the Cedarburg man’s association with an odious crime could live forever on the internet, reappearing with every search involving his name concerning employment, financial status and other subjects related to his identity 

Nearly two weeks after the Cedarburg man was declared innocent of any connection with the mass shooting, a CNN video was still up on YouTube with a banner that declared: “Person of interest detained in Brown University shooting is 24-year-old (name).”

It is more than likely, given the limitless reach of social media, that the Cedarburg man’s identity would have been made public even if it had not been revealed in mainstream media outlets. But the fact that some newspapers and other respected news organizations did so is nonetheless disturbing. 

These institutions, with their professional journalists trained in the skills and ethics of news reporting, are supposed to be counter forces to the cloud of unverified information and opinion posing as fact that casts its shade over much of the social media universe.     

For the record: Ozaukee Press generally does not name people in crime stories until they have been charged in court, which means that a prosecutor has reviewed the case and determined there is evidence that a person has committed a crime. Exceptions are made when reporting on high profile crimes if criminal charges are imminent and in cases that involve the arrest of public officials and people who serve in positions of trust.