Duke is a funny place when it comes to transparency. One day, it’s an impenetrable bastion that keeps a wealth of information away from the hungry community; upon those hidden files and silent conversations, Duke functions, and all that the community can do is be thankful to have at least been an afterthought to those in charge.
Today, the Duke community has been given a “rare look” into the quieted affairs of the university, as Duke’s dealings with the sexual misconduct case of Ciaran McKenna were made available and then thrust into public conversation through the efforts of Chronicle reporters.
It is fair to say that the Duke community isn’t used to this kind of transparency, not to mention the student-journalists’ detailed reporting, which carefully explains the inner-workings of a powerful, governing institution. Some are having a hard time with the news. Others are embracing it.
Nevertheless, the news has broken out, as Chronicle reporters Amrith Ramkumar and Neelesh Moorthy told the story buried beneath the front-page headline using McKenna’s legally-obtained case filing. But there are mixed feelings. Broadcasting the reports of McKenna’s detailed account of the early morning in question has caused some who feel close to the case—whether directly or in spirit—to feel that their privacy has been breached, and that the sensitive nature of the matter should have warranted that a less-detailed picture be painted for the public. Others feel that the reports provide the personal details necessary for more honest conversations regarding the case going forward, leading both the university and the community to the possibility of more effective change.
It is at this point of the internal debate that we Duke journalists are challenged. Do we protect those close to the sensitive matter by withholding information from the public, or do we act in what we believe to be in the best interest of the community and present the facts in raw detail?
To decide upon this problematic verdict, Duke and its community must understand the most important role of any journalist: the gatekeeper of news.
Because information is everywhere and information is power, it is critical that professionals who inhabit the media landscape sort through and judge what is and isn’t newsworthy, mainly because people don’t have the time or the expertise to do it themselves. Journalists decide what merits the public’s attention and energy—that is, what the public has to know—so that the public can take in and act on the news they receive in a well-informed world.
In 2017, societal trends have called upon journalists to consider the sensitivity of some types of information, adding to the standard responsibilities of journalists to protect the innocent from unnecessary pain or disgrace, to avoid libel or fiction and to always act in the public interest.
Journalists are faced with the moral question to publish or withhold news each and every day. The difficulty lies in weighing the personal impact of a story against the greater good it might accomplish. We often ask ourselves, “Is the publication of this story and its details—which we accept might trigger emotional reactions—necessary in the pursuit of the whole truth?”
Should we open the gates?
With the public’s concerns and individuals’ concerns and their own responsibilities going through their minds, Ramkumar and Moorthy went forward with the information that they had obtained. They pieced together the various components of McKenna’s case filing into a comprehensible and powerful article, protecting the identity of the accuser but including the details they felt that the public had to know as part of a complete and responsible understanding of the story. They believed that the details of the alleged assault, as well as the details of the legal proceedings that followed, were significant enough to open the gates for publication, understanding and reaction. It is indeed a “rare” opportunity to delve so deeply into the underpinnings of a sexual misconduct trial on a college campus, and the Chronicle reporters acted as learned students of the field of journalism in deciding that this was a story they could not pass.
As journalist and a member of the Duke community, I hope that that the thoroughness and the transparency of this news story will improve the efforts of universities and their communities to prevent sexual assault and to better work through sexual misconduct cases.
But this conclusion leaves those directly affected by the publicity of these details unsatisfied. Why must the quest for information come at their expense of their privacy, or even a common sensitivity? It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances, in which certain parties don’t feel that their “public interest” was taken into consideration with the detailed publication of the case filing.
This is where a healthy dose of “trust in journalism” might help us all. About one in five Americans fully trust the information they get from news organizations, according to a Pew Research Center poll. So it’s fair to assume that the majority of readers don’t fully trust the ethical practices of such news organizations either. Drowning in click-bait and "fake news," it’s too easy to villainize journalists, despite the centuries of devoted work they have done to expose corruption, spread stories of the success of humankind and tell the truth.
The gatekeepers—those who are guided by both their own personal moral compasses as well as the moral compass of a good journalist—don’t work for themselves; they are employed by society and receive assignments based upon its needs. They work amongst and in accordance to the very people they write for. The gatekeepers accept all of the potential impacts of publication—with a conscience—and push forward, with the thoughtful hope that their work is newsworthy, that it is attached to a worthy cause and that it might one day make a worthy difference.
To get past the initial shock and anger at the release of once-private information is not easy—especially in the handling of a sensitive situation such as sexual assault, especially on a college campus in 2017. But if we, the Duke community, can try to trust we, the Duke journalists, as we all work to make Duke a more transparent and a more informed place, perhaps the McKenna case can become a shared experience for the greater good of Duke, and of one another.
Jackson Prince is a Trinity sophomore and editorial page editor of The Chronicle. His column, “trump and i” runs on alternate Mondays.
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