I got an e-mail this week from the mother of a student quoted in Saturday’s story about the Brunswick High School bomb threat. She was upset that our reporter didn’t call her for permission to quote her son, and wanted to know what our policy was in regards to printing the full name and town of residence of a minor child.

I sent her a private response, but thought the topic might be good for the blog.

The answer to the second part of her question is easy. We rarely, if ever, use anonymous sources in local news stories, so we would not use his quote and attribute it to “a student who would not be named” or something like that. Identifying what town someone lives in is helpful detail for readers, and it’s not a secret.

The answer to the first part of her question, though, is more nuanced. We generally do not call parents for their permission to talk to teenagers. It isn’t practical. Instead we rely on the training and judgment of our reporters at news events to make their own decisions on whether a person’s quote or statement is important to the story, is based on fact, and whether the person being quoted is reliable and understands what it is he/she is saying.

There are some instances when we may seek a parent’s permission to quote their child. But those are generally the exception and are usually controversial stories where we want to make absolutely sure the person being quoted understands the impact of his/her statements, and that the parents are behind them.

As an editor I can tell you I’ve received plenty of calls from parents – usually on deadline, before a story has run – asking us not to use their kid’s comment in the paper. If their child’s quote (or picture, for that matter) is vital to the story, I’ll explain that and let them know how their kid factors into the story package. Quite often, that satisfies the parent. If the quote isn’t important to the story, we’re usually happy to take it out.

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