I think it is important to point to the Jovin case as reason to not rush in calling out a potential suspect, which probably affected how this case was conducted locally.

Obviously that strategy paid off, considering that the NHI “scooped” every other media publication in the country on virtually every aspect of this case.

NHI has a somewhat baffling policy for releasing names. Their crime log section which lists court sentencings (for crime already committed and found guilty) rarely includes the offender’s name, although sometimes it will mention their “street name”.

I agree that naming suspects before they’re charged raises a lot of complicated journalistic and legal issues. In general I’d hope the courts would recognize the principle of the “neutral reporting privilege” of the news media to report on the public utterances of police officials and other public officials. So if the police chief says John Smith is a suspect, the press should be able to report that, whether he’s charged or not. For example, the Illinois State Police have said Drew Peterson is clearly the prime suspect in Stacy Peterson’s disappearance, although he hasn’t been charged in that case.

It becomes even more complicated when this is something the police isn’t saying publicly but leaking privately, as in the Jewell case. There are a lot of questions of fairness, as well as legal issues. It reminds me of the argument Judy Miller raised re: Iraqi WMD… is it enough to accurately report what the authorities think/suspect, or do you also need to be right on the underlying facts?

Umm… care to rephrase this Dan? There might be good arguments not to name suspects who haven’t been charged, particularly if the authorities aren’t publicly identifying them. But of course someone can be a suspect without being arrested or charged.

I find it exceptionally hard to believe that a powerful & connected institution like Yale hasn’t been pulling every string they can…both directly and indirectly.

Sure small colleges don’t have quite that much clout, and maybe even Northeastern doesn’t…but Yale churns out Presidents and Senators. You better believe they have friends in high places and are spinning as hard as they can to come out as clean as they can.

I have no proof to any of this, of course…but again, I find it hard to believe that any public development in this case doesn’t have Yale’s fingerprints on it. The only question is how hard they pushed.