The WIVB-TV (Channel 4) interview Wednesday with convicted murderer Ralph “Bucky” Phillips about the parallels of his experience to escaped murder suspect Michael Burham set off a debate in journalism circles on two separate issues.
The first one is how appropriate it was to interview someone who is prison for life for fatally shooting State Trooper Joseph A. Longobardo and wounding his partner, Donald H. Baker Jr., in 2006. Phillips also escaped from prison and hid out in the woods while police conducted a manhunt to bring him in.
The second one is whether Channel 4 investigative reporter Luke Moretti and producer Daniel Telvock handled the interview well after they concluded it was worth doing.
According to sources inside Channel 4, there was internal debate over whether doing the story was a good idea.
The same sources said Moretti and Telvock had a head start on the story. They had been corresponding with Phillips for a while and had done a two-hour interview with him in a Central New York prison a month or so ago for a story that may eventually become its own program.
Their conversations with Phillips became more frequent after Burham escaped from the Warren County (Pa.) Jail, where he was being held after being federally charged with kidnapping a couple in Warren County and taking them to South Carolina. He also is a suspect in the May 11 fatal shooting of a Jamestown mother, Kala Hodgkin, but has not been charged in that case as prosecutors await results of lab tests.
I was uncomfortable watching Phillips being used as an expert on how a survivalist like Burham can avoid capture in the woods. But sometimes journalists must do uncomfortable stories.
I initially thought Channel 4 could have done an interview with a survivalist who hadn’t killed someone to explain how Burham could avoid capture. However, there probably is no one better than Phillips to address what Burham may be doing since he lived it 17 years ago.
The…
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