Two Baltimore police officers killed since Saturday, and in each case word of their deaths spread on social media sites before city officials released the information to the public, or even to all the relatives of the deceased.
The Sun's Justin Fenton explores this tricky issue in today's newspaper:
We in the traditional media have always tried to balance getting the word out with being sensitive to relatives. Reporters at scene often learn the identities of the victims well before detectives can find relatives. It comes from checking the address of a house, or from a neighbor, or from a police source.
This newspaper knew Portz's name before the police department had even officially notified the public of the crash. But we withheld because the sources were not official, and we wanted on-the-record confirmation from police and hospital officials that he had died before publishing.
But social network sites don't abide by those rules. As Justin points out today, with everyone being a self-publisher, they are free to report anything. But more and more, posting even sensitive information among trivial status updates seems to be growing way to alert people to news about surgery, disease and even death.