How tight should media and police ties be?

A senior scholar at Florida’s Poynter Institute, a school for journalists that prominently focuses on ethical issues facing the news media, has criticized an Albuquerque TV station and state police for acting in cahoots to capture a murder suspect on Monday. As reported in Wednesday’s Albuquerque Journal, Poynter’s Roy Peter Clark accused KRQE-TV of acting as “a civilian arm of the police” when it allowed a sheriff’s deputy to ride in its news helicopter while it searched for a red pickup truck being driven by the suspect in three convenience store robberies who had shot and killed two people. “I think it’s very dangerous,” Clark told the Journal, “because that may inspire some Lone Ranger journalist to do something foolhardy next time that could wind up getting an innocent person killed.” The station’s news director, Dan Salamone, responded, “The police made a reasonable request from us in a matter that concerned public safety.” News directors of rival Albuquerque TV stations said that, given similar circumstances, they would also have cooperated with police.