Editor Talks About BTK Case

Leading Coverage with "Sense of Perspective"

Editor Sherry Chisenhall led The Wichita Eagle's coverage of the BTK killer and his victims. Here are her responses to questions about the coverage of the victims:

Joe Hight: Did you have a specific approach to family members of BTK's victims?

Sherry Chisenhall: I wouldn't say a "specific approach," other than to respect when family members told us they didn't want to be interviewed. Some were very willing to speak publicly, some spoke somewhat reluctantly, and others didn't want to be interviewed. We always wanted to give them the opportunity to speak, but respected their answer if they declined.

JH: What prompted The Eagle to do the vignettes/stories on the victims?

SC: We were looking for a sense of perspective amid all of the coverage of the suspect in the case. As soon as the arrest was announced, the obvious curiosity was to know more about the suspect. But after several days of coverage, quite a few people in the newsroom had the same thought — we didn't want to leave readers without a sense of who the victims were. They were people with families, hobbies, hopes, disappointments. Many of their deaths happened so long ago; it would be easy for readers to think of those killings as long-ago historical events. The shock of the crimes can get lost in the passage of time, and we didn't want that to happen. Listening to the children of the victims, it was striking how much pain remained. We didn't want the human loss to be forgotten.

JH: What challenges did your paper face in covering victims considering the time difference between the actual killings and when the alleged killer surfaced?

SC: The primary difficulty was actually finding the victims' family members. Many of them no longer live in the Wichita area, and there were often no clear trails to find them. It took us months to find a few of them. Some of them had very clear memories of events that happened decades ago, and others didn't.

JH: What would you recommend other papers do when faced with these kind of challenges, especially considering that your paper was dealing with victims of an alleged serial killer?

SC: I think the key is to realize that each of them will react differently to interview requests. Some people find a catharsis in talking about their loved ones' death and their lives since then. Some are extremely open about the impact those deaths had on their own lives since then. Other people are outraged that a reporter would ask them about something they consider so private. Everyone reacts differently to grief, and it was important to work with each of them (or leave them alone) individually according to their wishes. It also makes a big difference to assign reporters who have the innate inclination to be empathetic.

JH: Did you consider specific staff members to cover the victims?

SC: The primary contacts were our Crime & Safety team reporters. Mainly Tim Potter and Stan Finger. They are two of the most empathetic reporters I've ever worked with, and they are very good about being sensitive to the families' needs and wishes. They're both very good at building working relationships with story subjects and sources. They're both easy people to talk to, and I think that makes a difference when talking to people about such a difficult event.

JH: How have the victims' family members reacted to the coverage? How has the community reacted to your coverage?

SC: Reaction is mixed. Some family members have a very good relationship with our reporters and are always willing to talk, return phone calls, etc. Others simply want no involvement with the media, and we respect that, too.

Community reaction has been far and away more positive than negative — especially to the profiles we wrote about the victims. The comments I heard in the community were that people were glad to be reminded who the victims were. And of course there are many people who moved to Wichita after the period of the crimes, and I think a lot of them found it helpful to learn about the victims and their families.

We had one unfortunate development that involved the district attorney's office. Her office faxed out a memo one night naming the families that she said had requested not to be contacted by the media — basically all of the victims' families. We were suspicious of that because some had been very helpful to us. We made some calls and several of the family members told us that they hadn't made that request — that the D.A. had pressured them not to give interviews, and told them they would compromise the case. We reported her memo in the newspaper, as well as the families' responses.

The unfortunate thing is that it happened right before we were publishing the profiles of the victims, and it left us with very little to write about the victims whose families hadn't yet been interviewed. Of course they could defy the D.A., but I believe many were truly worried at having been told they would compromise the prosecution. That seemed to me like an unconscionable manipulation of the families by someone in a position of authority.

JH: Did national coverage have any effect on your local coverage of the event?

SC: Not a great amount. At times we heard from readers or wire services who wanted us to report something they were seeing on CNN or Fox, etc. But the editors here, and reporters, agreed early on that we would hold fast to our standard of multiple sources before we'd report information. Some media were more willing to report rumors making the rounds, and it would have been very easy to get swept into that stream. We resolved not to, and held to that.

One difficult piece of the national coverage was being often unable to respond to media colleagues' requests for interviews. It simply wouldn't have been possible to do them all, and often they were asking to talk to the people who were already working 15-hour days to report the developing news. As a journalist, your instinct is to always extend the professional courtesy of doing the interviews, but it wasn't possible for us to do that.