It’s a relatively routine story. But an account last week about a federal judge’s procedural ruling in the long-festering Frank Jude case illuminates a lot about public ignorance – and the media’s sometime role in exacerbating it.
Judge Lynn Adelman isn’t sure whether former Milwaukee police officer Joseph Schabel was “acting as an officer” when he joined in the beating of Jude at a police party in October 2004, even though Schabel was on the scene, on duty and in uniform. Adelman left that question for a jury to examine when it hears Jude’s lawsuit against the city.
John Diedrich’s 14-paragraph story, posted on JSOnline July 12, prompted some 89 comments by last Friday. Most of them excoriated Adelman, some excoriated Jude, and all but a handful (such as this noteworthy exception) missed the point. Many commenters seemed to infer that perhaps the city, Schabel or both would get off scot-free as a result of the judge’s ruling.
Yet that’s a highly unlikely outcome – as the ruling itself makes clear.
Theoretically, Adelman could have ruled that the city is automatically liable if Schabel is liable. Or he could have issued a cut-and-dried ruling that peremptorily let the city off the hook.
He did neither. That’s not so unusual either, notwithstanding the commenters’ mostly ideological attacks on the liberal Adelman. Judges typically don’t like to take decisions away from juries.
The story never mentions a point that Adelman makes in passing on Page 3 of his decision: Namely, that earlier he had granted a motion by Jude’s attorney essentially ensuring that Schabel would be held liable in some manner in the incident.
What the judge said was that one, he would leave to the jury the question of whether the city was responsible for paying any damages assessed against Schabel because Schabel was a city employee, and two, he would not decide in place of the jury whether Schabel was liable for failing to intervene when others attacked Jude.
Both Jude and Schabel have reason to make sure the city is held responsible: Jude, because the city has deeper pockets, and Schabel, so that his legal fees get covered.
What’s missing is a comprehensive “nut graf” – an explain-everything passage high up that helps readers make sense of this ruling and where it fits in the larger scheme of things, bringing them up to date and pointing them toward why this story is really important – but also what it doesn’t say.
The closest the story comes to that is a paragraph that explains that had Adelman ruled the city was automatically responsible, that might have “prompted a settlement, shortened a trial or possibly required the city to pay legal fees for Jude, Schabel and others, which could top $1 million.”
Arguably, though, the city’s exposure remains: That jury could still decide that the city is responsible, not Schabel by himself. It’s a fact that strikes me as a little too muted in this story.
More to the point, however: The story plays up the provocative angle that raises the question, “When is a cop not a cop?” Although it’s accurate in the strict sense of the term, it comes off as misleading and overblown, and stirs up scores of equally clueless comments in the process.
This isn’t an argument for ignoring that issue, but it seems to me it’s adrift from context. A cynical interpretation would be that the angle was too sexy and provocative to let the more complex yet pedestrian reality get in the way.
Journalists covering complex, running stories face a delicate balance in how much background to offer and how much to assume the reader already knows. Failing to adequately explain can hurt a story. But so, too, can “dumb backgrounding” in which journalists give readers no credit for knowing anything – or go into so much arcane detail that what results is a law review article instead of a news story. Diedrich doesn’t fall into either of those traps.
Diedrich’s a solid reporter. And I tend to be a really dumb reader needing things to be spelled out as clearly as possible.
But in that respect, I don’t think I’m alone. Spelling it out clearly is an important task for journalists – especially in this information-overloaded time.
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