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Covering polygamists' custody hearing with attitude

By Mark Obbie

I've been closely reading accounts of the child-custody hearing in Texas involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's a case ready made for all sorts of legal-reporting heroics or sins. First we have odd-looking and -acting people accused of heinous crimes against children. Will skeptical reporters examine whether they're being treated fairly, under the rules, despite the snap judgments that the public and state authorities may find it easy to make? Has the state overreacted, or waited too long? What does the evidence really show, once the immediate crisis has passed and the case begins its methodical march through the system?Until now I hadn't seen any reports so notably good or bad that I felt the need to comment (though I was tempted after seeing an all-too-brief appearance by Jeffrey Toobin on CNN on Thursday afternoon in which he gave a remarkably substantive explanation of the rules of evidence, and why a document -- the writings found at the ranch that purportedly document marriages of older men to young girls -- is hearsay, but might be deemed admissible if it's a business record). But a reader pointed out this NPR report by Wade Goodwyn, the experienced, Texas-based NPR correspondent. And now I have a report worthy of critique. The trouble is, I'm torn between ripping it and praising it.On Thursday, host Michele Norris interviewed Goodwyn about the hearing conducted that day in a San Angelo, Texas, court. What's remarkable about Goodwyn's handling of the story -- this was pointed out by my astute (and shy) reader, and once I gave it a listen I agreed -- is his opinionated account of the courtroom scene. Rather than give a straightforward report on who said what, Goodwyn starts out with his opinion that "you've never seen a bigger mess than this morning's hearing" and sprinkles it with other pure-opinion takes on what he'd seen ("Take it from me. It was enough to make you weep," he says at one point.) The rants could make Goodwyn out to be a Glenn Beck or Mike Galanos clone -- presenting news as schlock entertainment, full of cheap emotion and moralizing, telling us at every turn what to think (because here's what they think) -- but, instead, Goodwyn backs up his point of view about the tenor of the hearing with detail. Because he was there, and he has his skeptic's hat on. The chaos of the hearing, he says, wasn't the judge's fault. Rather, it was a byproduct of the way the case was rushed to court. Evidence about, say, one mother might not be clear at all, due to confusion over women with identical names. At another point, Goodwyn notes that the judge's laughs from the bench sent some mothers "reeling" because they interpreted the laughs as a callous attitude toward their parental rights. I got the sense that Goodwyn wasn't just guessing. He knew that's what the mothers felt because he was talking to them or at least observing them up close.The report isn't long enough for Goodwyn to fully justify his point of view. Thus, he risks falling on the wrong side of the line between pure, reactive opinion and reporting- and fact-based perspective. But, because he takes that risk, he gives a better sense of what that courtroom really was like.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 19, 2008 (boomark / email).