There’s been a lot of heated discussion on Facebook and elsewhere over the last week about our Nov. 5 article, “Boulder business owners charged in chase.” The comments raise some important concerns, so I’d like to explain how and why we published that story.
First, the how: On Oct. 20, we (and, I expect, many others) began hearing reports of an incident involving two Boulder business owners and their friends. The altercation supposedly involved side-by-side vehicles, a fight and a firearm — and, we were told, the business owners and their friends had been arrested.
Our editor, David Lepeska, reached out to the four local figures said to be involved, but none were willing to discuss it. With little more than hearsay to go on at that point, we decided to leave the story alone.
But the situation soon changed. Each week, the Fifth Judicial District Court, whose jurisdiction includes Jefferson County, releases its list of cases to be heard the following Wednesday. On the docket for Nov. 5 were hearings for arraignments of the four men allegedly involved in the side-by-side incident.
David obtained from the court the motions from the County Attorney’s office describing the criminal charges against the four men: felony criminal endangerment for one; felony assault with a weapon for the other three. With these public documents – which anyone can view by request – the side-by-side incident graduated from gossip and speculation to a matter of public record.
The motions, written by Chief Deputy County Attorney Andrew Paul, were based on investigative reports by the Sheriff’s deputies and Montana Highway Patrol troopers. Those reports, in turn, included statements from the men who claimed they had been attacked and from the alleged attackers. The result was an unusually graphic series of court documents, laying out a dispute, multiple chases, and a fight.
Paul’s motions would be the sole source of our reporting – a fact we should have made more clear in the story. The now-defendants were still (understandably) not talking to us, and we didn’t reach out to the men who said they had been attacked. The details we published, including quotes from the defendants, came directly and exclusively from the court documents.
So, that’s the how. Which still leaves the why: Why did we choose to publish this story? On that District Court calendar, there also were cases involving, among other things, criminal possession of dangerous drugs, insurance fraud, and aggravated sexual intercourse. Those are serious charges and we didn’t report on any of them.
Without getting into the specifics of those other cases for now, here are the questions we ask when deciding whether to cover a crime. First, does it highlight a broad public safety risk? Next, did it result in significant damage or include multiple victims? Finally, was it a noticeably public incident or were prominent people involved?
This case didn’t meet the first standard, as far as we know. As for the second, the harm caused was debatable, and no doubt will be hashed out in court — but the felony charges suggest a potentially troubling violent crime. More importantly, there’s no question that this was a highly visible incident: the defendants are prominent citizens and, even before we reported it, many locals had heard some version of what had happened.
Some argue that because the defendants are decent people who do good things for the community they should be given a pass. This is understandable; we all prefer to forgive our friends. As civil rights advocate Bryan Stevenson said: “Everyone is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.”
But prominence cuts both ways. The behavior of our civic leaders helps set the bar for the rest of us. When they mess up, it matters more, not less. The fact that word of their actions spread around town so quickly underscores that this was indeed news. Had The Monitor not reported on what is now a matter of public record, readers might reasonably have wondered: Why not?
Again, our story should have been clearer about its sourcing — letting readers know that it derived entirely from the County Attorney’s motion, and also identifying who said what to the investigators. We also might have spared some of the more sensational details from that motion.
But I believe that we lived up to our promise to provide authoritative reporting that, as our mission statement says, is “not beholden to one path or another or to any politicians, political parties, or special interests.”
Meantime, the defendants have been arraigned and their court case will proceed. We will follow it to its resolution.
