Two Inconvenient Truths
But what about when there's bad news about the deceased that's newsworthy? It's a tough call. Right now, many in Boston are trying to figure out where the line is drawn.
Two Boston firefighters died in the line of duty late August, trying to put out a blaze in a Chinese restaurant. They were praised citywide as heroes. Two Boston Globe headlines around the time of their funeral read "A Solemn Farewell" and "Love Infuses Firefighters' Rites." A local newspaper editorial read> "The Grieving Process Has Begun."
Then came the bombshell.
Last Thursday's Globe article shocked the city:
One of two Boston firefighters who died fighting a fire in a Chinese restaurant in late August was legally intoxicated at the time, and the other had cocaine in his system, two officials said yesterday…The firefighting community immediately fought back. Boston Firefighter Union 718 President Edward Kelly released a statement saying that "The reckless and illegal release of confidential information has placed an undeserved emotional trauma on the Cahill and Payne families at a time when the grief and suffering from their loss is ongoing."A government official briefed on the findings of the state medical examiner's office said [Paul J.] Cahill registered a blood-alcohol level of .27 in the autopsy, which would have placed him at more than three times the legal limit, while [Warren J.] Payne had cocaine in his system.
Neither official was specific about the amount of cocaine found in the firefighter.
But Globe columnist Kevin Cullen countered:
It is probably no consolation to the families of Paul Cahill and Warren Payne, but we all will be better off when all this settles.And then the alternative newspaper in Boston, the Phoenix, weighed in on the matter with a piece called "The Trouble With Heroes," grappling with the pros and cons of making such a public example of two dead men:The disclosure that the two Boston firefighters who perished fighting a grease fire at a Chinese restaurant may have been impaired when they died means that, inevitably, there will be more attention paid to alcohol and substance abuse by firefighters.
That's a good thing, for firefighters and the public they protect. That is not a judgment on firefighters. It simply reflects realities, realities that should have been faced seven years ago when a commission convened by Mayor Thomas M. Menino and led by former police commissioner Kathleen O'Toole recommended confronting a firehouse culture where alcohol abuse was sometimes tolerated.
This was — and remains — a multifaceted story. There are the painful issues of whether Cahill and Payne's alleged substance use contributed to their deaths and endangered their fellow firefighters. There are lingering questions about the scope of substance abuse in the Boston Fire Department (BFD), and why Boston does less to screen for substance abuse than many other cities. (The Globe reported that, despite a lax testing protocol, 10 percent of the department has been ordered into treatment in the past three years; according to a recent medical study, 10 percent of all US adults have problems with substance abuse at some point.)….When the topic is Boston and the topic is media, there's only one person to talk to: Mark Jurkowitz – the one-time ombudsman and longtime media writer at the Boston Globe who cut his teeth at the Phoenix. He now is an Associate Director at the Project for Excellence in Journalism. I contacted Jurkowitz to ask him where he thought the line should be drawn in such a troubling story.But ultimately — at its core — this story is about our collective need for heroes, the press's collusion in that quest, and the way we respond when those heroes fall from grace.
The response he shot me via e-mail?
"While a story like this can be painful for families and loved ones, firefighters are public employees doing some of the most dangerous and important jobs in a community. They are literally charged with protecting the lives and property of its citizens. Thus information about the firefighters' conditions at the time of the tragedy is journalistically relevant and an important step in bringing scrutiny to a very legitimate public safety issue."
It's such a difficult call, but I'm with Jurkowitz. As far as this writer is concerned, the secrets of the dead should be buried with them – unless those secrets could impact the safety and very existence of the living. And this is a unique case where the revelations about these men could end up saving people in the end. Yes, the calculus involved in such a decision is cruel and makes things temporarily more difficult on the families involved – there's no getting around that – but it a decision focused on a long-term positive.
The firefighters' families were proud of their brothers, fathers and sons for devoting their lives to protecting citizens and saving lives. At the end of this story – after the current controversy dies down and, hopefully, after safeguards are imposed – perhaps Payne and Cahill's legacy may be that they continued preventing unnecessary deaths long after their unfortunate passing.