EDITORS NOTE: The news media’s practice of placing mugshots within the publication is long-standing. Seeing the impact this practice has on lives, groups are beginning to question the practice. The following story is a local recount of such questions and stories.
*Photo of Kevin Hobbs, provided by Kevin Hobbs
Kevin Hobbs is a professional actor, the Founder and Executive Director of D.O.S.E. Foundation, and a Teacher’s Assistant in Urbana School District 116.
On December 4, 2018, Hobbs was pulled over for a malfunctioning headlight.
When the Rantoul Police ran his license, Hobbs’ name elicited an arrest warrant for a small claims violation relating to a sanitation bill from years ago. Hobbs had not been aware of court summons regarding the overdue bill, as they had been sent to the wrong address. He was taken into custody by the Rantoul Police, but speedily released.
As Hobbs tells it, the police were cordial with him.
“Every police officer I dealt with during the ordeal treated me with the utmost respect,” he says, mentioning that throughout the process, the police seemed aware that the arrest was largely a formality and that they “went above and beyond to be sure the experience was not a harrowing one.”
The greatest frustrations arose the next day when Hobbs’ mugshot was posted in the News-Gazette.
Hobbs explained the story behind the mugshot via his Facebook page the next day in a post that went locally viral.
He wrote, emphasis his, that, “Normally, I don’t discuss personal matters publicly but since the The News-Gazette saw fit to publish my mug shot right along with robbers, abusers and hardened criminals WITHOUT so much as one mention of the fact that this was a SMALL CLAIMS issue; I felt the need to speak out and PROTECT my name.”
Hobbs went on to describe why he feels the blame lies on the News-Gazette.
He wrote, “This sort of racially insensitive, lopsided, irresponsible reporting from this paper hurts reputations, careers, families and has lately harmed this community more so than it’s helped it.”
Hobbs sees his own story as microcosm of a larger affliction that envelops media today where outlets don’t provide the full context in crime reporting. He says media is afflicted by a need to be first, while devotion to accuracy and context are secondary.
But another pressing problem for Hobbs is the effect mugshots have on racial stereotyping.
Hobbs is a black man and he says that posting of mugshots perpetuates with “reckless abandon” the idea of black people as criminals, because when black faces are repeatedly shown in the mugshot section of a paper, negative stereotypes are reinforced in the minds of readers.
But Hobbs says it goes further than that. He says, “It’s one thing to say that this practice isn’t good for people of color, but it isn’t good for anybody.”
After telling his story on Facebook, he was approached by people with similar stories: one person who lost a custody battle because the other party was able to provide a mugshot and another person who lost a job because of a mugshot and they had to move to find a new one.
Hobbs expresses concern for young people he knows whose names are attached to mugshots and, because of the internet, will have their names and faces tethered to those crimes for long into the future.
Shortly after Hobbs’ story gained attention on social media, another person’s experience came to light.
Christopher Hansen, publisher of CorruptCU.com, photo provided by him.
The website CorruptCu.com alleged journalistic misconduct against the News-Gazette and WCIA. It also alleged local government impurities. The story gained attention on social media, notably on a local Reddit forum.
The website was created by Christopher Hansen, a former University of Illinois College of Engineering student and current-day carpenter and electronics designer.
CorruptCU tells the detailed story of Hansen’s mistaken arrest following a false accusation of purse snatching. Hansen says that his mugshot and crime story appeared in the News-Gazette and WCIA, leading many to believe he had actually committed a crime.
Hansen wrote about the results of the misleading reporting, saying that he had to explain his story numerous times to friends and neighbors who had read the News-Gazette’s account and believed it.
Hansen wrote, “One close neighbor to whom I have spoken almost daily for over a decade was ‘thoughtful’ enough to offer to help me with my ‘drinking problem’ – he had read the News-Gazette article and concluded that it was so unthinkable that I would ever legitimately rob someone that the only plausible explanation was that I must have been drunk out of my mind.”
Hansen added that he contacted both the News-Gazette and WCIA who shared the incomplete story about him and asked them to correct and update the stories, but received no response.
Hansen aimed blame directly at the media outlets, saying, “You should be ashamed of yourselves. The public looks to news organizations to expose the ill behavior of institutions. Instead, you are just peddling cheap click-bait and refusing to shoulder the responsibility that comes with your reporting.”
Because Hansen’s business exists largely online, he expects he has lost potential clients who Googled his name and may have been turned off by the search results.
In an email, Hansen said that he had been contacted by multiple people who have also been similarly harmed by a mugshot article from the News-Gazette.
A common frustration he heard was that the News-Gazette regularly reported the initial crime but rarely gave a follow-up, leaving a potentially inaccurate, damaging insinuation broadly available to the public.
Hansen wrote to the Mahomet Daily that his impression of the subjects of crime reporting often feel helpless.
He says, “Something very embarrassing and, from their perspective, factually incorrect, has been permanently published online, and they have no means to have it corrected or even voice their side of the story.”
Mugshot reporting is a commonly used practice in local news outlets. Recently, it has become a subject of wider debate.
Newspapers that publish mugshots argue that sharing the images and reporting on the crimes allow communities to know who is dangerous so they can be avoided. Mugshots can act as “wanted” posters with a visual description of a suspect, and they are a source of public shame for criminals.
Newspapers also argue that mugshot reporting is part of their role as record keepers for a community because publishing mugshots creates a historical record of who was booked into jail on any given day — correctly or incorrectly.
Perhaps the strongest motivator, though, is that mugshot publishing is a low-cost method of generating substantial pageviews, and it therefore acts as a revenue source for funding other valuable journalistic ventures.
But as the stories of Kevin Hobbs and Christopher Hansen show, mugshots have serious consequences for the subjects.
Mugshots and crime reports don’t always have follow-ups and they often lack context, meaning harmless, innocent people could have their names and faces marred by no fault of their own.
Additionally, mugshots and crime reports sometimes expose personal information like addresses or areas of residence which put people in danger of retaliation.
Mugshots are a more extensive business than just that which is found in local media.
One online outlet, Mugshots.com, hosts vast quantities of mugshots from people across the U.S.. The site requires people to pay to get their mugshot removed.
In May, 2018, the two alleged owners of Mugshots.Com were arrested on criminal charges. California’s Attorney General said that Mugshots.Com was profiting off of humiliation and that the pay-to-remove scheme was “exploitation, plain and simple.”
When a mugshot is posted online in a widely read local newspaper like the News-Gazette or on a large website like Mugshots.com, it generates clicks. As a result, these photos rise in search algorithms, often becoming one of the first results in search engines.
In an increasingly online world where first impressions are often made via Google, search results can be vital in getting a job or making a new business connection.
After community pushback following the widely-read stories of Hansen and Hobbs, the News-Gazette announced on January 14th that it would take steps to change its crime reporting.
In their statement, the News-Gazette wrote that, “By their nature, crime stories do not usually lend themselves well to visual accompaniment — except, of course, for mug shots. In that regard, the straightforward, egalitarian approach is to include them when publishing the associated stories online. But in practice, it might not always appear that way.”
The News-Gazette went on to say that the industry as a whole has been dealing with the question of how to properly report on mugshots, and that one catalyst to their change was a letter by an “Urbana man” who had listed concerns about their practice. The News-Gazette confirmed that the author of the letter was Christopher Hansen.
The News-Gazette promised three changes to their crime reporting.
First, to ensure all crime stories that are reported on are followed to conclusion.
Second, to decide whether to include mugshots on a case-by-case basis, which would likely result in fewer being published overall.
Third, to delete mugshots in cases where a person has their charges dropped or is acquitted, but not to remove the initial crime story because of its importance as a “proverbial first rough draft of history.”
Crime reports remain prominent on the News-Gazette’s website. These stories often present themselves as recommended readings in the News-Gazette’s other articles.
In fact, at the time of the Mahomet Daily’s reading of the January 14th statement, the reader was directed to one story displaying a mugshot, one story about basketball, and three other crime stories, one without a photo, one with a mugshot, and one with a court photo.
The News-Gazette’s statement and reforms did not satisfy the editors of Smile Politely, an online culture magazine in Champaign-Urbana known for its arts reporting and common distaste for the News-Gazette’s editorial work.
Smile Politely has prolifically criticized the News-Gazette for the mugshot publishing practice.
In their “WORST 2018” column from December 21, 2018, the magazine wrote that, “Even more than the editorials that come out of [The News-Gazette], even more than Jim Dey’s bloodlust for liberal thinkers and activists, it is the scraping of the Champaign County Sheriff’s site for mugshots, and the republishing of them, for anyone to see, that makes our blood boil.”
Smile Politely also shared the stories of Hansen and Hobbs on their website to amplify the critiques of the News-Gazette’s practices.
Following the News-Gazette’s January statement, Smile Politely railed against the paper in a piece called “The News-Gazette’s statement about publishing mug shots is terrible,” pointing out flaws in the statement and saying, “it simply falls short.”
The crux of their critique was that the News-Gazette didn’t discuss why mugshots contribute to systemic racism and disproportionately harm people of color.
They criticized the News-Gazette for using the mugshot portal to earn money, saying, “Take one glance at their online portal of mug shots and it is completely littered with advertising and clickbait garbage.”
Smile Politely also contended that the changes the News-Gazette was making did not go far enough, saying that just because an image is removed after an acquittal “doesn’t mean the damage isn’t already done.”
Smile Politely has had a hardline policy against mugshot publishing since 2015 when they wrote a story criticizing the News-Gazette’s policies.
In an email, Smile Politely shared their mugshot reporting policy.
Their email states, punctuation theirs, that, “The advent of universal internet availability, and social media presence, has created an unhealthy and unfair environment for people who have been arrested and face criminal charges. These people are innocent until they are proven guilty, and we are not interested in perpetuating their image at one of their most difficult moments.”
They add that, “The court of public opinion is swift, and oftentimes, sensationalizes the truth. As such, we do not publish mugshots, under any circumstances, even after a conviction has been made. It is not something we believe makes for a good news story. We believe that it actually undermines the importance of strong journalism, and reporting.”
In one noteworthy case, Smile Politely announced the arrest of Brendt Christensen with a brief blurb that hyperlinked readers to Christensen’s personal LinkedIn account, which contained a photo of Christensen.
At the time of Smile Politely’s posting in June, 2017, while the reported evidence was substantial against Christensen, he had not faced court and had not been convicted.
Sharing the personal LinkedIn profiles of criminal suspects is not standard reporting procedure and the information available on Christensen’s LinkedIn does not shed light on anything more than Christensen’s employability.
Seth Fein, publisher of Smile Politely, says that everything about the case was an “anomaly,” and that providing Christensen’s LinkedIn was a quick way to give people a rough idea of who he is.
The news station WCIA posts mugshots along with crime stories. They access the mugshots via Freedom of Information requests.
Gary Hackler, General Manager of WCIA, says that their policy is to request each mugshot available. He says, “If someone’s been arrested, we want to get their mugshot to make sure everyone knows who that person is.”
When asked about WCIA’s retraction policy, Hackler says, “Once acquittal happens, [the person affected] reaches out to us and we do it on a case-by-case basis.”
In contrast with the News-Gazette, WCIA does not have a set policy to follow every case they report on to close.
The Mahomet Daily and SJO Daily, operating under Sangamon Currents, LLC., has developed a different approach on the topic. Their policy is as follows:
Understanding the complexity of arrests and warrants, and that the media has a responsibility to not just to report, but to report accurately, the Mahomet Daily and SJO Daily only posts mug shots and stories of arrests when or if there is an immediate danger to public safety.
In the early days of the publication, the Mahomet Daily followed stories of arrests, and may have posted those stories at that time. Recent policy, within the last two years, is only to do so when the public needs to be made aware of situations where their safety or property is in danger.
Some outlets have taken action to prevent crime stories and mugshots from becoming easily visible on Google, which could reduce the harm a single crime story does to someone’s online reputation.
Some outlets have acted to scrub all mugshots from their paper after a designated time-frame when they are no longer deemed “newsworthy.”
And still other outlets have dispensed with the practice entirely.
To Kevin Hobbs, abolishing the practice is the best solution.
He believes the practice is cheap and done only to draw the eyes of readers — not to inform. And while he acknowledges that the News-Gazette is, like many traditional papers, losing readership and in need of a revenue flow, he maintains that the practice is unjust.
Hobbs blames the bad policy on the higher-ups in the News-Gazette, saying the make-up of their leadership is lopsided and ill-informed. He wants people who “look like the community and think like the community” to lead the community paper.
Hobbs believes the paper must change who they care about and the pressure to create this change must come from the readership. He says, “The community coming together and showing its outrage is how it’s gonna have to happen.”
Hobbs knows that local media like the News-Gazette is vital and he doesn’t want it to disappear.
But, he says, “If their mission is to report, and to report fairly and accurately, then they are failing at that mission, and I’m speaking from a very personal perspective.”
