The questions raised by Voinov’s Facebook post—which Bass didn’t ponder until after the fact—were similar to the ones raised by Del Rocco’s Facebook posts. For the Independent , the Voinov story was, Bass says, “the closest thing to a precedent.” But there were significant differences. Del Rocco, unlike Voinov, was tangential to the primary story. She was also alive. Plus Bailey knew that the information had been accessible only to Del Rocco’s “friends.” On the other hand, Del Rocco had given Bailey access by accepting her friend request, and she had kept Bailey as a friend even though she knew Bailey was a journalist writing about Raymond Clark.

The Independent had already published an article about the police report filed by Del Rocco. Now the question was whether to also write about her Facebook posts, either in an update to the original story or in a separate article. Bailey and Bass, who shared a small office, would make the decision together.

One point they could agree on: if they wrote about Del Rocco’s Facebook posts, they would continue to conceal her identity. Bass and Bailey were confident that no other journalist would name her, at least not in the short term, because no other journalist had the police report. Even if the Independent went with the story, Del Rocco would have significant “shielding,” Bass says. But that didn’t settle all of their ethical questions: it was, after all, quite possible to violate the privacy of an unnamed person.

Bass and Bailey were reluctant to surrender a scoop; they were out in front on a big national story, and they wanted to stay there. But the Independent was a community-based publication that placed a particular emphasis on doing no harm to the people it covered, especially people who were innocent. “We were charging hard for this story,” Bass says. “But we [didn’t want] to be snakes."