A lead story tells one side: the law's.

Pro: Seeking comment from those accused of crime protects the innocent

Journalists are in the business of telling the truth as best they can determine it, not merely disseminating the facts presented by those in power. Sometimes the police and other government investigatory bodies wrongly accuse people of crimes or malfeasance, and it's the responsibility of the press to be fair to all parties, no matter how guilty they look in an indictment. (According to the California Judicial Council, 23% of felony cases in 2003-2004 ended in acquittal, dismissal or transfer to another jurisdiction.)

The code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists calls on editors and reporters to "Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing." The code, as a declaration of SPJ's "principles and standards of practice," makes no exceptions for those who are hard to reach because they are under arrest, those who will have a chance to speak at an official hearing at a later date, or those who appear to have a mountain of evidence lodged against them.

If law enforcement is sometimes in error, then the press, by repeating charges against individuals, is amplifying the error. Journalistic due diligence requires each person accused by name to be contacted and given an opportunity to refute the charges. If suspects are in jail and thus unavailable for comment, often their lawyers, family members, friends or business colleagues can speak in their defense and ameliorate the harm to their reputations.

Lack of resources, staffing, space on the printed page or time in a newscast are all poor excuses. If your newsroom doesn't have the time to do a thorough job on a crime story it should withhold the names of the accused until it can try to get the other side of the story.

If the accused or a spokesperson cannot be reached on deadline, saying so in print will allay concerns on the part of the public that the press is serving as a mouthpiece for the police or prosecutors at the expense of innocent (or not-quite-so-guilty) suspects.

Allowing only suspects with the resources to contact the paper, usually through a lawyer, to defend themselves is likely to introduce a class bias against the poor.

Con: Trying to track down every suspect on deadline would paralyze newsrooms

In an ideal world, a reporter would have the time to interview every suspect accused of a crime -- and the police wouldn't do anything to get in the way.

In reality, newsrooms are faced with myriad obstacles, not least of which is that suspects are often in lockup or being booked on charges and can't be contacted before the TV news goes on air or the newspaper goes to press. In fact, calling to ask for the responses of people in police custody is often futile.

Even without seeking comment, printing suspects' names and recording the fact of their arrests is itself a check on the power of police. Otherwise, the police might feel emboldened to abuse their power by taking people into custody beyond the watchful eye of the public.

At a time when corporations are tightening newsroom budgets, journalists are increasingly pressed for time. The reporter for the Alameda Newspaper Group who wrote the story about the eight people accused in defrauding the Department of Motor Vehicles was so busy that he filed two other stories that same day, which took him out of the office on two occasions. And he was tasked with filing multiple versions of the same story: The same article focused on different suspects in the lead sentence in the Oakland Tribune and the San Mateo County Times. Working on multiple stories a day is also common for television reporters, who have even fewer words in which to tell their stories.

This is the way newsrooms really operate. Police reports -- "cop blotter," as they're called -- are regularly published in papers and include the names of suspects. Tracking down each one would be prohibitively time-intensive.

More important than getting comment from the accused on the first day is following the case through the legal system. "If you write a brief about someone accused of armed robbery," Mike Oliver, regional editor of the Alameda Newspaper Group wrote, "then you're obligated to write at least a brief later of that case's disposition -- whether the accused was convicted or acquitted."