Gary Pinkel's DWI

This past Wednesday night (Nov. 16), Mizzou football coach Gary Pinkel was arrested for driving under the influence. After being pulled over, he refused to take a BAC (blood-alcohol content) test and pleaded guilty. Ironically enough, he is featured in an "Arrive Alive" advertisement for the state of Missouri promoting motorcycle safety, and with Mizzou as the center of news spreading with the vast amount of journalism majors, you can imagine how fast news spread on this story. Typing in Pinkel on Twitter gave me updates by the minute, from @komuNews, our television station in Columbia, Mo. with information from broadcast journalism students, the Columbia Missourian newspaper and more. 

The articles and jokes began early Thursday morning, expressing disappointment in Pinkel's decision, notices released from Chancellor Brady Deaton and Athletic Director Mike Alden and later, Pinkel's "official apology to Tiger Nation." All expressed disappointment and outrage with Pinkel's decision, acting as a poor role model to his team, the University and the Mizzou community at large. He will be suspended for one week along with other consequences, and donate a week of his salary (over $40,000) to the MU Wellness Resource Center to promote awareness of the mature management of alcohol.

The biggest ethical upset I have with the coverage of Pinkel's DWI is the published dashboard camera footage of his arrest. KOMU news, Columbia's NBC affiliate, obtained the video coverage and uploaded it to its YouTube station itself. This was uploaded yesterday and my friends noticed it from smart phones on our drive back to Chicago from Missouri. I was appalled at the decision to publish this videotape and immediately questioned its necessity. 

Gary Pinkel is already embarrassed by his actions and has assured a horrible PR scandal to both the University of Missouri and our recent conference change to the SEC. As a journalism student currently enrolled in Communications Law, my class just finished a unit on privacy, obscenity and newsworthiness. 

• Does Pinkel have a reasonable expectation of privacy? No, this happened in public and according to the "standing in" doctrine, filming such footage is legal as long as one recorded from a public area where anyone driving by could have seen what happened. There is no issue about the recording or publishing it. 
• Is it of legitimate public concern? Sure, the news has a huge effect on the Columbia area and Mizzou community. 
• The video or news is definitely not highly offensive to a reasonable person, not even Pinkel himself. 

We see that answering the questions of these test, there is no dilemma to posting the video. The story is newsworthy, but here are my questions. 

What does the video add to the story? 

Does it share anything the public needs to know? 

Does it share anything that can't be understood through written words and stories? 

In a world of emerging technologies, news outlets feel the need to post whatever they have as soon as it's obtained. Videos, infographics, recordings, etc... because we have the capability to. But too often, we ignore the question of what it contributes to the story and rush to posting everything we have on the internet and outlets like Twitter catering to the public need of sharing news.

In this case, we have two news outlets AFFILIATED with the University of Missouri (Columbia Missourian and KOMU news) singlehandedly contributing to our university's national embarrassment from this incident. And I would love to say as a journalist and Mizzou student that they are serving the principles of good journalism by doing so, but they are not. The video of Pinkel's arrest contributes nothing to the story that has not already been reported, and until I see a rationale of what it adds, I have lost respect for both of them.