Dear Editor,

In the case of a former Member of Parliament being charged for incest, media houses have been following the ethical guideline of not naming the accused person to protect the privacy of the child victim.

However, the spirit of this guideline is certainly being violated when media houses then proceed to publish multiple identifying details, such as the political party to which the person belongs, the police station where the person was charged, age and sex of the victim, community in which the accused person lives, the date on which the alleged incident took place, and the circumstances under which the accused person and victim were together.

All the details I just named have been reported by different media houses. So even though no one media house may have given all this information, this allows for what is called “jigsaw identification”, where members of the public can put together different pieces of information and figure out who is being discussed. This is something that is specifically warned against in codes of ethics for the media, such as that from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that states that, “Care should be taken not to reveal several pieces of information that could compromise a person’s anonymity when put together: so-called ‘jigsaw identification’.”

The code of ethics of the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) states that in reporting on cases involving a sexual offence by an adult against a child, the child should not be identified, but the code does not warn against jigsaw identification.

The PAJ’s code states that the adult may be identified if such identification would not cause the identity of the child to be revealed, in which case the word “incest”, if applicable, should not be used. In such a case, the offence would be “described as “serious offences against a young child”, “sexual assault of a child” or similar appropriate wording. The concern about jigsaw identification would still be valid.

We may want to talk about varying the convention to report in this way given public concern about the prevalence of sexual offences in Jamaica. My personal view is that in a small society, like Jamaica, we should stick to the convention of not naming the accused person at all. Yes, this protects the accused person incidentally, but, in my view, best adheres to the legal and ethical principle of acting in the best interest of the child, and incest victims are often, although not invariably, children.

The PAJ’s code of ethics is a useful starting point for us to have this discussion, but the code is now 15 years old, and it is time for it to be reviewed and updated.

Dionne Jackson Miller

Journalist

Attorney-at-law

dionnejacksonmiller@gmail.com