In the unfolding drama that is the sniper story, what role is the media playing - villain, supporting actor, messenger?

All of the above, depending on the day and the mood of Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose, who by turns has castigated, thanked and used the media over the three-week span in which the still at-large sniper has stalked random victims in Maryland, Washington and Virginia.

As 300 newspaper editors gather in Baltimore today for an industry conference, a fascinating case study of their business continues to play out nearby, illustrating some of the issues they will be discussing during a four-day meeting: access to information, excellence in reporting, dealing with graphic photographs and credibility.

"Our credibility is really on the line with a story like this," said Ed Jones, editor of the Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg, Va., and incoming president of the Associated Press Managing Editors, which is holding its annual meeting in Baltimore along with the Associated Press Photo Managers. "We're very much a part of this sniper story."

Part of the reason the press has become a player in the story is the nature of the modern media: With 24-hour cable news networks and up-to-the-minute Internet updates, the public now watches events unfold as they happen, rather than waiting for journalists to tidy up the raw material of their reporting and present it on the evening news or in the morning paper.

Conflict and control

With the sniper story, viewers can now watch the daily wrestling match between Moose and the media, the former seeking to control the information released about the police investigation, and the latter seeking more details about a case that remains largely shrouded in mystery.

Live TV coverage of Moose's daily briefings exhibits what to non-journalists must seem like total chaos - reporters trying to outshout one another and ask the same question multiple ways, Moose finding just as many ways not to answer them.

"The public has more of an opportunity today to see the sausage being made," said Carol Nunnelly, on leave from her post as managing editor of the Birmingham News in Alabama to direct an APME project to improve newspapers' credibility.

Credibility has become an important issue in the industry, with a recent poll showing that the public's image of the press, which had risen after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is now dropping again.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, in a survey released several months ago, found declines in how those polled viewed news organizations on professionalism, fairness and accuracy.

While reporters might believe they are acting on the public's behalf, uncovering information for its benefit, that's not necessarily how readers and viewers see it, Nunnelly said.

"The public doesn't always believe that we are acting in the greater good," she said.

Nunnelly hopes to help combat that with her APME National Credibility Roundtables Project. Newspapers across the country have held community roundtable discussions in which participants pick apart a local issue and how the newspaper covered it.

It is something of a smaller, localized version of what is happening now, unofficially, as it seems everyone has something to say about media coverage of the sniper. Letters to the editor and e-mails to cable news channels often feature complaints: The Sun and other papers, for example, offended readers with a photograph of the covered body of Linda Franklin, the FBI analyst killed Oct. 14.

Others have complained that reporters are wasting Moose's time by hounding him for more information, or that they are playing to the sniper's ego by focusing so much on him.

And, indeed, there are those who believe the media - both in reporting official statements and in airing unofficial speculation - might be driving some of the shooter's actions.

"Moose says the schools are safe, a school [in Bowie] is targeted. They report he's only targeting areas near a major artery, then he goes to Seven Corners," said Washington-based media analyst Matthew T. Felling, referring to the shooting of Franklin in a congested Virginia suburb. "They report that military jets will be used for surveillance here, he leaves D.C."

Felling, media director at the Center for Media and Public Affairs, makes a distinction between how various news organizations have covered the shootings. Newspapers, which print only once a day, have time to offer a more reasoned approach to the story, while the 24-hour cable stations "have to advance the story hour by hour," he said.

"At this point, it is a 20-minute story filling five hours of time," Felling said. "It's spackle. It's news spackle."

Given the relative dearth of information about the shooter, much of what fills the airtime has been speculation.

Seemingly every former FBI profiler or criminal investigator has been spouting theories on the killer's actions and motives: There previously were no shootings on weekends because he was watching football. He returned to Montgomery County after several attacks in Virginia because that's where he's most comfortable.

"These talking heads go from being experts on O.J. to experts on the election in Florida, and now they're experts on the sniper," said Tom Kunkel, dean of the journalism school at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Many words, few facts

News organizations have turned to these so-called experts to fill a vacuum - there is very little solid information out there, and yet the public remains intensely interested in the story. Viewership at the three cable news networks, CNN, Fox and MSNBC, has jumped - by 24 percent to 29 percent.

And yet the police have kept a fairly tight lock on information, citing concerns that the investigation could be compromised by the release of too many details that only the sniper would know.

The media have largely shown restraint in releasing non-official information, Kunkel said: "I know reporters who know some aspect of the investigation that they haven't printed."

"Any journalist who does not think his or her reporting has an impact in a story like this is being irresponsible," Kunkel said, going on to paraphrase what Watergate reporter Bob Woodward recently said at a Maryland lecture: "No story is worth a human life."

Still, he anticipates that as the sniper continues to stalk victims and elude capture, reporters are going to become more aggressive in pursuing information, with or without official police approval.

That has started, and police have had to respond: Some news organizations reported yesterday that the letter left for police at the site of the Ashland, Va., shooting Saturday had contained a threat against area children, but Moose refused to confirm that at his regular midday briefing to reporters.

As the reports continued to circulate, however, Moose felt compelled to hold a second briefing later yesterday afternoon to issue the letter-writer's exact words: "Your children are not safe anywhere at any time."

Sense of restraint

But, for the most part, journalists have exhibited more restraint than they have on other stories, perhaps because for many of them, the area under siege is home. Many Washington-area reporters live in the Maryland and Virginia areas where the sniper has struck, and they share the same concerns about safety as the public.

"My parents live 10 minutes from here," said Mary Beth Marsden, the WMAR-Channel 2 anchorwoman, after she broadcast a recent update on the case from outside Montgomery County police headquarters in Rockville.

Marsden said that while there are always tensions between police and the media, in a case of such a dangerous at-large killer, journalists are generally willing to cooperate. She cited the case of police asking the media to air appeals to Joseph Palcyznski during the Baltimore area man's two-week rampage of kidnapping and murder in 2000.

"They said, 'Will you run this, because we know he's watching,'" Marsden said. "When lives are at stake, sure."

Similarly, the media have been more than willing to convey Moose's odd and not totally explained messages to the person, believed to be the sniper, who has been in contact with police in recent days.

Moose has made several cryptic statements via the media to the person, saying first that police had received the message and did want to talk, then that police were formulating their response, and then that they wanted the person to contact them again to clarify things.

But then, at yesterday's first briefing, reporters offered Moose an opportunity to speak again to this person, but he declined. At his second briefing, he again did not speak directly to the person but did say police would be "responding soon."

At his evening news briefing, Moose renewed his plea to the sniper to renew a dialogue.

Nunnelly said that on such a sensitive story, when people remain at risk, reporters must weigh the impact of what they print or air - even as they cannot forget their true mission.

"You have to consider when you're doing harm," she said. "But it has to be a clear and present danger for the press not to do what it's supposed to do, which is tell the story."