By David Keck
DAILY PRESS EDITOR
As a kid, I always loved that guy on late-night television who exclaimed in business baritone, “We interrupt this program to bring you an important announcement.”
Then the next few minutes were spent hawking term life insurance, an amazing new diet pill, kitchen knives that cut through steel beams like butter, or whatever ware or service the advertiser buying that broadcast time had to sell, all with the same money-back guarantee.
We’re not doing that here.
Instead, we’re interrupting this space to explain why we’re rethinking the publication of what usually goes in it. In this case that’s arrest logs: That list of people who’ve been arrested on suspicion of various crime around our communities.
The arrest logs may represent to us a problem with fairness, something we take very seriously at the Daily Press, Desert Dispatch, Apple Valley Review, Hesperia Star and Lucerne Valley Leader. We don’t generally follow up on each individual case after the arrest logs get published, which may leave the impression to some folks that these people were guilty of the crimes for which they were arrested.
That not only goes against basic jurisprudence and Constitutional guarantees of presumed innocence in our Republic, it chafes the sensibilities of the people who put our newspapers together. It’s also led to a few phone calls from readers complaining that it’s a petty way of smearing someone’s name in the paper.
As a newspaper editor, I’m not fond of the terms unfair and petty.
So I approached Publisher Al Frattura with my concerns and he suggested that I ask other department heads here what they thought of the arrest logs.
The winces on the faces of each when they were shown the feature and asked their opinions said it all. Remarks labeling arrest logs as unfair, pointless and trivial punctuated the conversations.
They suggested that a better offering for our readers might be to list those convicted of crimes locally, though we’re not sure yet if we can get that information in a nice, neat package like we can get the lists of those arrested. We’re checking to see if it’s possible.
Meantime, we’d like to know what our readers think. Do you read the arrest logs? Do you think they are fair or unfair? Do you believe that listing those who have been convicted of crimes might be a better option?
Please let us know by writing to us at Apple Valley Review, 16000 Apple Valley Road, Suite C-5, Apple Valley, CA, 92307; email us at News@AppleValley-Review.com; or reach me at 760-951-6270 or editor Martial Haprov at 760-951-6236. We’re always looking for ways to best serve our readers and our communities here in the High Desert and we value your input.
That’s our guarantee.