The nearly month-long ordeal is now finally over in upstate New York. One month ago, two convicted murderers escaped from the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility using power tools. Today, one of them is dead and the other is back in custody.
There is no doubt that what David Sweat and Richard Matt were able to pull off was elaborate and impressive. One may even go so far as to say that it was like something out of a Hollywood movie: cutting through steel walls and pipes, traversing through endless underground mazes and ultimately emerging through a manhole cover outside the prison.
But how much comparison is too much? Several news organizations, such as this story from The Boston Globe for example, have compared the daring escape to that of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, a Stephen King novella that was made into an Academy Award nominating drama film. The Globe article references the film not once but twice, first in the headline and again in the third graph.
Other media giants have, in response, pointed out the danger of this out of worry that it may distort the truth of the actual story. The Shawshank Redemption is a work of fiction, but USA Today went further than just pointing this out by providing a short list of clear differences between the two escapes in a recent analytical piece. For example, there was in fact doubt of Andy Dufresne’s guilt in the movie. But David Sweat and Richard Matt were tried and convicted of murder, as well as reported to be armed and dangerous.
WGBH’s “Beat the Press” panel also recently tackled the issue, arguing that comparing Dufresne’s escape to what actually happened in New York last month can put a media organization’s audience at risk for wanting to root for the escapees. It is romanticized so much in The Shawshank Redemption that that appears to actually be the film’s goal.
To say that the escape was reminiscent of what we see in the movies is one thing. But with two murderers on the loose and no immediate trace of either of them for weeks, officials knew they had to be captured as soon as possible before the men caused any harm to anyone else. And news organizations reporting the escape and subsequent captures of Sweat and Matt should be mindful of what they draw upon in telling the story. Perhaps arming it with factual information, such as it being the first escape since the prison opened in the 1840s, would serve journalists better in making a story that much more compelling to their readers.
Matt Ingersoll 
It’s a good topic, Matt. In terms of ethical principles in tension, I wonder if it’s partly a matter of various dimensions of pursuing the truth. Part of the task of the journalist is to provide audiences with ways into a story. And as useful as it might be to describe the similarities and differences of this story to prison-escape movies, your point is well taken that much of the coverage seemed over the top. When you reach a conclusion like that, it’s often useful to sit back and ask, OK, if that angle has been done to death, what’s a fresh angle that readers might find useful and interesting. One possibility: An exploration of readers’ emotional engagement with the story. I have to admit to having been fascinated enough by the story that I read pretty much every word written by NYT reporters about it. But I’d still be interested in a story that I don’t believe I saw: Just what drove my fascination with it. Perhaps some of it had to do with my own coverage (partly by helicopter) of another notorious prison break (this one in 1975) described here.
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