Maintaining our credibility also requires that we tell you when we’ve failed to live up to those standards. This, unfortunately, is one of those occasions.
In the aftermath of violent acts by protest marchers in 2008 and 2010 in downtown Olympia, we stated repeatedly that neither The Olympian nor Tony Overman, our photographer who covered the protests, ever supplied unpublished photos of protesters to police.
That’s not true. We regret that we misled our readers.
As reporter Sean Robinson discovered in researching today’s Page One story about anarchists in the region, Overman allowed police officers to view photos of protesters committing acts of violence during both marches. In each case, police used the photos to identify and arrest protesters.
In sharing those photos, Tony violated our long-standing policy of refusing to release to law enforcement agencies photographs and other material that have not been published in print or online.
We have that policy to ensure that we can be independent, unbiased observers of what goes on in our community. We are not an arm of any law-enforcement agency.
But applying such a policy is fraught with complications, and reasonable people can disagree about the appropriateness of Tony’s decisions. In the heat of violent confrontations, Tony held evidence of people breaking the law in his own hands, on the memory card in his digital camera. In a split-second decision as he watched people committing violent acts and in one case was assaulted himself, he chose to let police officers look at the photos on his camera’s view screen. That violated our policy.
But what happened after the protests is more disturbing. For three years Tony did not tell his editors what he had done, insisting that police had access only to photos published online or in the newspaper. That’s true, as far as it goes. The photos he shared with police eventually were published. But at the time police viewed them, they existed only on Tony’s digital camera. By omitting those facts, he misled our readers, as well as his editors and colleagues.
Since that time, local activists have continued to complain that Tony gave police the photos. Tony continued to deny it.
Tony has struggled about the decisions he made.
“The problem that I’m wrestling with is that I did the right thing as a citizen and I did the wrong thing as a journalist,” Tony told Robinson in a recent interview.
Last month, someone painted an anarchy symbol on Tony’s home, painted “Overman snitch” on his truck and slashed its tires. The Olympian’s building was similarly defaced.
Many in the community, including photojournalists and co-workers, rallied around Tony. He repeatedly told questioners that The Olympian had not given unpublished photos to police. Even when confronted at a June support rally by one of the protesters his photos helped to convict, Tony insisted again: “I did not give – I did not give anyone anything.”
Still, nothing Tony has done justifies what has been done to him. He was assaulted with spray paint, and his home, truck and camera were damaged by vandals who hide behind dark masks and call themselves anarchists.
Over the years he has worked in Olympia, Tony has earned the respect of his colleagues and many people in the community for his excellent photography and his professionalism. I’m convinced that these incidents represent an aberration in an otherwise unblemished career. Tony will be the subject of a disciplinary action. Then we’ll move beyond this, and Tony will be back out again doing what he does best – reflecting our community through the lens of his camera.
Jerry Wakefield: 360-754-5440
jwakefield@theolympian.com
