PressEthic

The former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan Samuel H. Bowers died Sunday of a heart attack while serving a life sentence for the 1966 assassination of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. He was convicted in 1998 for a crime committed in 1966 which means he only spent 8 years in prison- hardly justified for what he did. The article on CNN.com as I know is supposed to deliver the hard facts but I think it is pretty relevant to state early on in the article the fact that it took so long for Bowers to even be convicted. In reading the article I was angry because as a journalist delivering hard news our opinions just do not matter. If I were the one writing the article would it be biased for me to put the inappropriate timing of the sentence close to the top of the article? Even if it were important to state. After all Bowers is dead after only eight years in jail and I fail to see the justice in that. He committed many acts of terrorism in his lifetime yet, it was hard to get him sentenced. I am torn because I am not sure that in a case like this that I ould be able to risk the temptation of framing the story in a way that suited me. Is that wrong? I don't really think it is unethical but I know that I would be biased right from the start. Bowers,82, lived a long life compared to Dahmer who died at age 58 and I think that opposition is so important to the story. Who really cares that he died--people die everyday. The real story is the fact that he lived 24 years longer than Dahmer and that it took 40 years to convict him of the crime. Another point to the story would be the fact that he isn't the only Klan member to escape punishment for 40 years. There are at least 8 other men in states such as Mississippi who lived untainted as though they'd never hurt a soul.