Art Linkletter was right: "Kids say the darndest things!"

When I initially learned about  Chicago TV station WBBM editing  an interview with a 4-year-old boy last month to make him sound like an aspiring gang-member when he actually said that he wanted to be a policeman, I decided to pass. I try to avoid making obvious observations, and nobody could defend the conduct of the station’s editors, who intentionally truncated the child’s remarks to the interviewer to make them sound chilling. The larger question of whether the child should have been interviewed at all, however, is more challenging. We see kids being interviewed on TV all the time, and it is far from certain that reporters are doing so ethically.

In the wake of  the WBBM incident, journalistic ethics expert Al Thompkins reprinted his guidelines for interviewing juveniles on the Poynter site. I’m an admirer of Thompkins, but I found his guidelines almost as chilling as the distorted interview itself. Here is his guidance on the issue of interviewing kids, with my reactions: Continue reading →