A Lesson Learned

4 days ago, FTVLive told you how Tegna’s KENS (San Antonio) had the retract a story.

You can read our story at this link.

One FTVLive reader says that he and his family dealt with a very similar incident in their town and he sent along this email that hopefully some of you will read and heed.

Scott,

I hope anyone who reads your post about the Erik Cantu story from KENS uses it as a learning opportunity. It unfortunately happens more often than we think.

My brother-in-law was murdered in Mobile, AL in 2016. It was obviously incredibly traumatic for my wife and mother-in-law, but it was only made worse by the news coverage that day and over the week. They watched as his “cousins” and “god-mother” were interviewed and shared stories about him; the only problem is that he did not have a god-mother and those were not his cousins.

The fake god-mother tried to use the news stories as evidence to view his body at the morgue and the fake cousins (and others) tried to convince his landlord to let them into his apartment to collect his belongings. This was all so damn much to pile onto an already grieving family.

I didn’t envision myself being anything more than a regular reader of your site, but this story hit so close to home. Just a piece of advice to journalists: if it seems too convenient and easy to be true, it probably is. The likelihood of the family of a homicide victim working next door to them or being willing to go on camera the day their loved one was killed is extremely slim. Please don’t just try and turn your story as quickly as possible. It can do incredible harm to people that are already in immeasurable pain.