Here is the Public Editor column from Sunday, April 9, 2006:

The robbery was reportedly the largest in Wake County history -- a small fortune in jewelry, electronics and other property stolen from a home in the western suburbs. A couple were arrested in Colorado, after selling off most of their haul at pawnshops from Florida to Colorado.

That's what a newspaper person would call a good story, and The N&O duly reported it recently in an article about the capture of the suspects. Most of the stolen property was recovered.

But it was not a good story for the victims, who were unhappy to see their names in the paper. Identifying them publicly, they said, amounted to a second victimization that invaded their privacy and made them vulnerable to another theft. The couple tried, without success, to get The N&O to keep their names out of the paper.

[More:]

Complaints about reporting of property crimes occur with some regularity at newspapers; I can think of three that have come my way in recent months. In one case I had to tell a friend in Orange County that I couldn't stop The N&O from reporting the theft of her husband's expensive shotgun collection. She didn't let friendship get in the way of her anger.

The N&O does not routinely report property crimes, except when they are out of the ordinary. Here are three reasons for doing so, cited by N&O editors:

1) Newsworthiness. If it's the biggest burglary in Wake County history, that's worth the community knowing about.

2) To fully inform readers and maintain credibility. If we published stories about burglaries without names and addresses, how would you know we didn't make it up? That's also why we identify victims of physical violence, who I think have a better case than burglary victims for keeping their names out of the paper.

3) Publishing addresses alerts people to where crime is occurring, so they can secure their own homes. The address also helps clarify which John Smith in Raleigh we're reporting about.

There are good arguments for the other side, some of which came to me recently from an unlikely source. Stephanie Gibbs is a former newspaper reporter of nearly two decades, most recently for The Charlotte Observer. But now she is a Raleigh lawyer representing the victims of the Wake County burglary, and she wanted their names not reported. (I'm not identifying the couple in this column, because it serves none of the purposes above to further publicize their sad plight.)

Gibbs asked that the paper make an exception as it does for victims of sex crimes, whom The N&O does not identify.

"When someone's home is broken into and their house ransacked, their belongings scattered around... a violation has occurred," Gibbs said. "It's not as deep a violation as a sexual assault, but it's still a violation. The people that know that this was or is a source of potentially sellable items in that home, they know that the house is accessible in one way or another."

Gibbs said her overriding concern is about victims' personal safety and that information should be withheld only in rare cases. She suggested that newspapers use a two-step test for determining whether property crime victims should be identified: first, whether a law enforcement officer deems it a security risk to the victims, and second, "whether adding the name and/or address really adds substantively to the story."

Ronnie Stewart, chief of operations for the Wake County Sheriff's Department, oversaw the case involving Gibbs' clients. He asked The N&O not to publish their address because, he said, they were from another country and especially vulnerable from a security standpoint.

Van Denton, the N&O's metro editor, said the paper's policy is to publish names and general locations of a property, but not specific addresses. Thus, a report will say, "the 600 block of Glenwood Avenue" but not the address. In the recent case, responding to Stewart's request, the paper did not include even the general location.

But Stewart did not ask the paper not to publish their names. He said he could recall only two instances in 40 years of police work when it appeared that newspaper identification of property crime victims resulted in a follow-up theft. "You can see it's probably not that much of a security risk," he said. "I can't say it's a big problem."

I agree. The benefit to readers of knowing where crime is occurring in our community -- one of the basic responsibilities of a newspaper -- outweighs the slight chance that a second victimization will occur. Newspapers should be sensitive on a case-by-case basis, but the operating premise should be to report what we know.

My only problem with the recent story is that the newspaper played it on page 6B. The biggest heist in county history?! -- it should have been on the front page.

• • •

In my column last week about The N&O's interview with the reported Durham rape victim, I said N&O policy discourages use of anonymous sources except when the information can be obtained in no other way. Deputy Managing Editor Linda Williams said I misunderstood the policy:

"The N&O's policy is biased against using anonymous sources, but the newsroom has never said that we don't use anonymous sources. We've also never said that the sole determining fact is whether the information is available elsewhere. We have often faced situations where the information was not available elsewhere, but still declined to publish with an anonymous source. The most important element of our policy is, there must be a full discussion with the top newsroom editors about whether using a source without a name is valid in the specific case at hand." That discussion, she said, occurred in the Durham case.

The Public Editor can be reached at ted.vaden@newsobserver.com or by calling (919) 836-5700,

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