Megan's Law: "Naming" a New Ethical Dilemma
By Keith Woods , The Poynter Institute For Media Studies

In late July, 1994, 7-year-old Megan Kanka of Hamilton Township, N.J., was kidnapped, raped and murdered, allegedly by a neighbor who, unbeknownst to the community, was a twice-convicted sex offender.
Less than two weeks after her body was found, New Jersey lawmakers pushed through an emergency measure requiring that police notify communities when certain sex offenders move into a neighborhood. It was called Megan's Law and it sparked a national drive, fueled by presidential politics, to pass a federal law bearing the same name and intent.
The case also sparked a timeless debate among news organizations trying to identify the line that separates their responsibility to the public and the responsibility to vulnerable individuals.
That debate found its latest home in the case of E.B., an Englewood, N.J. man who successfully petitioned a federal appeals court earlier this year to prevent authorities from carrying out Megan's Law, which requires police officials to notify neighbors, day-care centers and schools whenever convicted sex offenders move into a community.
E.B. confessed to the 1969 rapes and gruesome murders of two Virginia boys, one of whom he buried alive. He admitted those crimes in 1976 while in prison and undergoing therapy after molesting three boys in New Jersey. He served out his sentence and was released in 1989. He and his wife bought a home and lived in Englewood for more than six years without notice.
Then came Megan's Law and the lawsuit. And then came the Guardian Angels and their leader, Curtis Sliwa.
Unhappy and impatient with the legal processes preventing the wholesale dissemination of names and information, Sliwa's group printed fliers bearing the man's identity and declaring, "E.B., we know who you are." They handed the fliers out in the neighborhood. A political activist went on Sliwa's radio talk show and broadcast the man's name to listeners.
At the North Jersey Herald and News, a copy editor noted that a story on those events bore E.B.'s full name. "The copy editor said, 'We've got a story here with a name in it. Do we want to run this?' " said Herald and News Editor Ian Shearn. "That story was barreling right towards the press. We pulled it."
Thus, one news organization in the area confronted the ethical dilemma of choosing between public information and individual privacy. The involvement of community activists such as the Guardian Angels challenged the media to make independent decisions about identifying E.B. as public opinion in support of Megan's Law grew.
From the moment his lawsuit was filed, E.B.'s true identity was available and could legally be printed and broadcast. It took only a little research to figure out that he was the man who confessed to raping and choking a 14-year-old Petersburg, Va., boy and burying him alive, then stabbing a 13-year-old boy 21 times after raping him. The boys lived a block apart.
The state Associated Press tracked the name down quickly, then had to decide what to do with it. The decision: Withhold the name until the courts rule.
"We had a full range of discussions with good arguments on both sides," said Mark Mittelstadt, the A.P.'s New Jersey Bureau Chief. "We tried to act responsibly without contributing to the problem. This was a tough one."
John Oswald, managing editor of the Jersey Journal, had no trouble figuring out that the Journal would become the first newspaper in the state to run E.B.'s real name. With a local peg for the story (the politician who named E.B. on the radio lives in the Journal's coverage area), the newspaper's leadership came to a deadline decision.
"It seems like a really basic point of information," Oswald said. "We run names of shoplifters in (nearby) Bayonne. We're not going to run the name of a man who killed two kids; tortured and raped them? I don't see the point of that."
E.B.'s decision to challenge Megan's law in court made him a public person, Oswald said. The fact that E.B. was trying to derail a law of such national prominence and statewide popularity gave the story all the news value it needed to propel his real identity into the newspaper, Oswald said.
There weren't "great hours of debate going on about it" at the Journal, he said, inasmuch as the issue first surfaced on deadline after a television station broadcast E.B.'s name. A small group of editors at the Journal debated the question for "about an hour," Oswald said.
By contrast, the Bergen Record convened a group of more than 20 people -- editors, reporters, even a former prosecutor now writing on legal affairs -- in a meeting Editor Glenn Ritt said "eventually turned into a seminar." The discussion lasted about three hours, Ritt said, and yielded a decision to wait until the courts had ruled before deciding whether to release E.B.'s name.
"We didn't want to make an ad hoc policy that we would have to revisit the next time this kind of case came up," he said.
The Record did have an opinion, though. In its editorial, "Why we're not naming E.B.," the newspaper said his crimes "were monstrous, and we believe the community has a right to know who he is. But we also believe that in a nation of law, the court should be given time to rule on the case."
For the news organizations involved, the case prompted great soul-searching and few clear answers. "I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer, only the one we came to," said the A.P.'s Middelstadt.
News decision-makers, excluding Oswald, worried about the potential consequences of publishing E.B.'s name in such a charged environment, where the threat of violent vigilantism was thought to be quite high.
They worried about the swamp they might walk into by journalistically embracing the legislative and legal movement to get more and more information about crime and criminals out to the public.
"Where do you stop?" asked Shearn of the Herald and News. "Do you print the name and address? Do you print the model of car? The license plate number? His picture? Do you tell people where he works? Where he drinks? And is the newspaper the venue to do that? Zoning's not that good. We can't zone a block."
With few exceptions, the initial decisions were made after hasty but extensive collaboration. Shearn, who spoke briefly to Middelstadt and tried to reach the Bergen Record's Ritt, mused about the value of a journalistic "Bat Phone" that editors in the area might pick up for quick conversation about tough ethical calls.
Such collaboration has worked before, he said. "It's probably easier to do than we think," he said.
As E.B.'s case moves toward resolution, many wrestling with the case's ethical hot points say there are still few answers and far more questions; questions that will be around no matter how the courts rule:

• How can journalists move beyond their gut reactions when an ethical issue clearly strikes a strong emotional chord? How can they make thoughtful decisions on a case of this nature involving competing principles and conflicting loyalties to different stakeholders?

• How do editors build in collaborative decision-making on deadline, recognizing that different voices will raise legitimate concerns and potential alternative actions?

• When does the public's right to know supersede an individual's right to privacy?

• What responsibility does the media bear for consequences if the public reacts violently to information provided by journalists?

• How much should news organizations look to the courts to help resolve an ethical issue?

• What is the newspaper's role in this case? Megan's law was passed to force law-enforcement, not the media, to promulgate the names and addresses of child sex offenders.

• How long can/should the media choose to withhold a name when it is already in the public eye in one form or another?

• Should a news organization's decision be influenced by the fact that other news organizations have published or broadcast controversial information?