Now that the trial has begun, journalists have started wading into the details of the grisly murders. Reporters will have several months of voir dire hearings to listen to – but not publish – the evidence while it is judged for admissibility. Under the law, reporters are not allowed to report such information until the evidence is heard in open court during the trial.

They will need the time.

As Dan Burnett explains, reporting on trials of this magnitude takes a deft touch. “The voir dire ban is just one of the legal landmines for reporters,” he writes. Journalists will also face a series of other legal restrictions, not to mention an array of ethical dilemmas.

The language used in the first news reports of a major story can have a lasting effect. In the Ryerson Review of Journalism , Amanda Shuchat explains how a simple choice of words changed the world’s perception of Toronto after the Boxing Day shootings on Yonge Street.

“In the aftermath of the shootings, one particular phrase, the year of the gun, is used by Toronto media to assess a quickly fading 2005,” she writes. “Big, scary headlines and excessive memorial reportage leave the impression that the city is no longer safe.”

When it comes to crime reporting though, there is perhaps no better guide on what not to do than the now infamous case of the “Central Park Jogger.”

As Columbia Journalism professor Lynnell Hancock points out, the press jumped to conclusions after police charged a group of black and Latino teenagers from Harlem with the brutal rape of a young, white woman in Central Park.

Hancock says editors quickly framed the story along the lines of good versus evil, rich versus poor, white versus black. Reporters felt obliged to follow that narrative, and the public was left with a lasting – and false – impression of what happened.

“David Krajicek, who covered the rape as police bureau chief for the New York Daily News, recalls that reporters were under tremendous pressure to stay true to the top-down narrative,” Hancock writes. “And in the competitive frenzy surrounding the story, that narrative took on a life of its own, ultimately slashing the city into two angry parts — white and black, Wall Street and Harlem, law-abiding adults and barbaric youth. There was little room for nuance. The image of savage kids rampaging through the city's streets was branded into the national consciousness.”

The accused youths recanted their confessions shortly after being arrested, saying they had been coerced by police. But no one listened. The first impression of the case stuck. It wasn’t until 13 years later, after the young men had served their sentences, that DNA evidence and a confession from a serial rapist proved they had been wrongly convicted.

The revelation caused a great degree of soul-searching in the journalism community about the role of the press. And though the Pickton trial is barely a month old, similar soul-searching has already begun.

As Heather Travis writes, some journalists say the media has already failed, not by getting the facts wrong, but by ignoring the disappearances of Pickton’s alleged victims for years.

“That’s the charge being leveled by CBC News: Sunday associate producer Audrey Huntley who has been documenting the stories of missing Canadian Native women,” Travis writes. “She believes that news stations are continuing to make the same mistakes that Vancouver Police and RCMP did, deferring their investigation despite the evidence set before them.”

As for the Pickton trial itself, Kendyl Salcito says reporters will also have to struggle with a circus-like atmosphere surrounding the courtroom. The trial has brought lots of attention from all sorts of people, including victims’ families. And while their emotional interviews might make for good television, reporters have to be selective about what they broadcast.

CTV producer Tracey Robertson told Salcito that some members of the murder victims’ families were more than happy to express their opinions on Pickton after he entered the courtroom.

“A lot of them were overwhelmed at seeing him,” she said. “They want the media to carry their strongest, potentially libellous views. They had a very emotional response and wanted to express it to us, but we can’t air it.”

The stakes are high when journalists take on major crime stories like the Pickton trial. The high-profile nature of the case will draw large audiences, meaning readers, viewers, media critics, and lawyers will go through news reports with a fine-tooth comb. Reporters must walk a fine line, balancing their duty to document the details of the case with their legal obligations to avoid libel and contempt of court.

In addition to these legal regulations, journalists will also need to consider tricky ethical questions. It will be important to select words carefully in the first major stories to come out of the trial, as those stories will heavily influence public perception throughout the trial and after the verdict. There will also be opportunities to tell compelling stories about the victims and their families. These stories ought to be told, but reporters will have to rein in their emotions to make sure they don’t convict Pickton in the press.