Bomb threats and responsible journalism

Several readers asked us why we publicize bomb threats at schools and why we used a photograph of one threat written on a bathroom wall.

Generally, we try to do minimal coverage on what we consider non-serious bomb threats. It happens every year. A nice spring day, somebody wants to get out of school, and they create a "bomb threat" not knowing, of course, the seriousness of the situation.

Our rule of thumb: If the kids were evacuated and the school was swept by police or bomb squads, we do a story. We reason people are going to want to know why kids are leaving school. Could be gas leak, could be infrastructure problem, could be bomb threat.

It's important to know how serious authorities are taking the threat as well.

So, we report that news without say but don't put it on the top of page one in a banner headline, unless of course, there was a bomb found.

When there is a second, kind of copycat, bomb threat, we try to downplay....maybe do a brief on the inside news pages. If schools take no action and authorities don't take a threat seriously, we sometimes do nothing.

In the bomb threats a few weeks ago, we did a story on the one at East, and included a picture.

Some readers wondered why we included the picture. Wouldn't that just encourage kids to copycat?

We used the picture after verifying its authenticity. We also determined it was all over Facebook, so we were not going to be able to keep kids from seeing it anyway.

We also talked with Mankato Supt. Sherri Allen and she said she thought it might be helpful to publish the picture with the idea that more kids, more parents, more staff would see it and maybe recognize the handwriting or some other revealing characteristic that would help apprehend the person making the threat.

We did learn later that evening that it appeared a person had been caught. We could have pulled the picture, but again, we felt, it was all over the Internet anyway. And we could lend words to the picture and a story explaining the facts of the case and how serious it is taken.

Whereas if you pull the picture, then the only place kids are getting information about it is Facebook, where a lot of kids were making fun of it, framing it as a joke, thinking it was not serious.

We always think about these kinds of decisions more than people would expect or predict. We're very aware of the power of the media and some of these things just need to be thought through a bit now and then.