I admit it. The “He said-She said” reporting style drives me nuts.

So I’m bouncing off the walls this morning reading the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin follow-up stories about an alleged sexual assault involving students on the school campus.

I saw the Advertiser first, where reporter David Waite has a Honolulu attorney sparring with Kamehameha Schools’ representative over whether the school was required to report the alleged assault to police. It quickly woke me up and got my blood pressure rising.

Why? Because it take takes on an important community issue and reduces it to a “he said-she said” debate, as if state law is contained only in an oral tradition that relies on such second-hand interpretations.

David Waite is a very good reporter. His story hits on an important question. He gets good sources on the record. And he has written what is almost an excellent story. Almost.

Waite ultimately fails because the “he said-she said” format takes a straightforward factual question (“is there a law requiring this type of incident to be reported to police?”) and turns it into a matter of subjective opinion (“who should we believe, attorney Frank O’Brien or Kamehameha Schools vp Ann Botticelli?”).

Throughout the story, Waite attributes all characterizations of existing law to his source, Honolulu Attorney Frank O’Brien.

Francis “Frank” O’Brien, who specializes in child protection matters before the court, said Hawai’i law clearly states that employees or officers of a school must notify the state Department of Human Services or the police department immediately when a student reports being sexually assaulted.

The reporting requirement applies to both public and private schools, O’Brien said.

O’Brien is a smart attorney and there’s nothing wrong with those quotes, as far as they go. But why in the world didn’t the story cite the law directly? Couldn’t Waite have asked O’Brien for the proper citation and looked it up? It’s not like state law is contained in secret or obscure texts.

Instead of checking whether or not the legal requirement is in the law, Waite turns to Kamehameha’s representative, former Advertiser reporter Ann Botticelli, to get Kamehameha’s side of the story.

Again, it’s all reduced to “he said-she said”, his opinion against hers.

The reader is left with this exchange:

“If there were a mandatory reporting requirement for this situation, we would have followed it,” Botticelli said in an e-mail response to questions from The Advertiser.

O’Brien said the reporting requirement has been on state law books for more than 25 years.

Note that today’s story by Star-Bulletin’s reporter Leila Fujimori tackled the issue in similar fashion, using slightly different sources.

Again, he said, she said.

I’m afraid this is the rather absurd end to the editorial style that’s been in vogue for years which calls for omitting technical details of public policy stories. Reporters are all too familiar with being told that readers don’t want “inside baseball” technicalities,they just want to cut to the “meaning” and the impacts of policies on “real people”.

In this case, readers are unnecessarily left without a clear answer about the legal requirement. The situation could have been clarified with a very simple reference to the actual statute. Then the stories could have gone on to let each side discuss the implications of the statute.

A small difference but a very crucial one.

Finding the statute didn’t require a run to the law library.

I did a simple Google search, using these terms: “hawaii mandatory reporting sexual assault school”.

Among the top search results was a reference to the National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children, with a state by state list of legal references. A click on “Hawaii” went right to the relevant statute: Chapter 350 Hawaii Revised Statutes.

§350-1.1 Reports. (a) Notwithstanding any other state law concerning confidentiality to the contrary, the following persons who, in their professional or official capacity, have reason to believe that child abuse or neglect has occurred or that there exists a substantial risk that child abuse or neglect may occur in the reasonably foreseeable future, shall immediately report the matter orally to the department or to the police department:

…

(2) Employees or officers of any public or private school;

Further reporting requirements are then spelled out in statute.

The law also provides a penalty.

§350-1.2 Nonreporting; penalty. Any person subject to section 350-1.1(a) who knowingly prevents another person from reporting, or who knowingly fails to provide information as required by section 350-1.1(c) or (d), shall be guilty of a petty misdemeanor.

A simple sidebar quoting the statute could easily have been included. Or a quote such as the one I used here. Or even just a citation to the chapter so that readers could look it up.

So it goes in journalism land.