Megan Maier of Dardenne Prairie was a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide in 2006, all because of cruel messages on her MySpace profile. The bully, Josh Evans (who she had never even met) seemed to show interest in Megan early on. As time passed, the messages became hurtful and nasty things were said like, “The world would be a better place without you.” Little did Megan know, Josh was fictional, and a creation of a woman, her daughter, and old female employee that lived down the street.
The journalist who broke this story, Steve Pokin, of the Suburban Journals in St. Charles County, faced a huge ethical dilemma about when, and how much to say regarding this case of a child suicide. Wanting to wait until charges were filed, he held off writing the story, but, as he came to find out, the police, prosecutors, and FBI couldn’t find a law that had been broken.
With the guidance of his editor and lawyer, Pokin decided to not name the neighbors involved with Megan’s death in his article because no charges were filed, and the daughter was a juvenile suspect. Cases like this are handled much differently, because little of the evidence found could be proven, due to the fact anyone could have typed the messages on the computer.
Pokin and the Journal made a judgment call, not to reveal the suspects’ identities, causing a multitude of complaints and attention to the story. They felt they were upholding the rights of the accused, who had not yet, at the time, been charged. Although the neighbor admitted the scheme to police, enough evidence was not uncovered to charge them with a crime. Because of this, an ethical dilemma was presented; do we open a can of worms and put people in danger by telling readers possibly too much information? Even though readers were outraged by the omitted suspect’s names, Pokin analyzed his decision by the use of Mill’s Utilitarianism principle. This principle states, “an act’s rightness is determined by its contribution to a desirable end.” In this case, Pokin went against telling the whole story, hopefully making an ethical call not to harm the suspects involved. Even though the public may not have agreed with this, more damage could have potentially been done, had the community had too much information. It could have even put their safety in danger because of community outrage.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch took a different approach when reporting this case; they named the neighbors involved. Was this ethically correct? Instead of waiting for the story to eventually unfold, they assumed naming names was the right way to go about reporting this case. Journalists are supposed to uphold nine ethical news’ values, in which accuracy, confirmation, tenacity, and equity are particular rules they chose to honor in this case. Supposedly, an informed ethical decision may be made based on these guidelines, but what about in the instance of a minor? What about the potential harm from vigilantes in the community? According to the theory of Communitarianism, the Post based their decision on community interest and that it trumped individual interest in order to make the best decision for society as a whole. They felt this community had the right to know all the details that had been discovered in this case, and if I was a parent, I would want to know the whole truth. Protecting other possible children’s deaths could very well be a good enough reason to let the public know the names of these cyber bullies.
This case involved a child’s death, which was tragic, and by telling the story his way, I feel that Pokin and the Journal were trying to bring the issue of cyber bullying to the community’s attention, not put the families and suspects in the eyes of the media and draw a negative outcome from a terrible situation that had already taken the life of a child.
Of the two ethical decisions made, I feel that I would have agreed with Pokin and the Journal. Since evidence was unable to be linked to a certain person, and charges were not filed, the neighbors have rights too that should be protected. Even though, as a reader, I would like to know as much information as possible, as a writer, I would want to do the ethical thing and uphold my morals. As a journalist, people may have disagreed with Pokin, but he was trying to protect both families involved, and write the story in the best way possible to be considerate to the family members mourning the loss of Megan. His story was to show the outcome of cyber bullying, not to create a public outrage against a 3 individuals, who had yet been charged with a crime, which could have resulted in more tragedies.
Ultimately, I think social networking sites, like MySpace and Facebook, should intervene in circumstances like this, when they can. When persons, either real or fictional, are allowed to do harm to another person, laws must be made to protect the victims. Cyber bullying is not only cruel, as this case shows, it can also be very dangerous. Freedom of speech is a good thing, but doing harm to another is not. Just as kids at school have been punished for bullying another, cyber bullies should be punished also. However, in cyber bullying, it is very difficult to prove who the bully is. So, preventing it is a more realistic option. When cyber bullying is reported to the networking site, they should do everything in their power to block any future transmissions between these two people. Closing down harmful MySpace and Facebook posts should be done when their only purpose is to harm another individual and it must be done to protect our children.
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