Pamela Gould pgould@freelancestar.com Pamela Gould has spent the last eight years as a general assignment reporter at the Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star. She was previously an editor at the Potomac (Va.) News.

 

Contributions

How trusting should reporters be of law enforcement?
SHOWCASE | December 361, 2007
A small paper in Virginia recently produced an extraordinary 24-page special report on the authorities' relentless pursuit of the wrong man in a serial-killing case -- relating a series of missed clues, bad judgments, false statements and broken promises. Pamela Gould of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star writes that the prosecution of Darrell Rice is a case study in why reporters need to be more skeptical of what police and prosecutors assert without proof – particularly when they are making assertions that go far beyond the actual charges.